On Sunday 24 March 2002 12:13, you wrote:
>]> Price of MSX Player. Windows version is free price. And Yokoi wants
>]> OPEN SOUCE CODE LICENSE like GNU. But some program code writters donot
>]> like it. They wants protect their program technology from other people.
>]
>] He cannot license the code under GPL without permission from Marat. You
>] cannot give away something you don't own.
>
> That is exactly his point. Yokoi would prefer to make it open source but
> some program code writers (like Marat) do not like that. Which indeed means
> that it can not be put under open source.
I want to offer the MS Windows code under GPL. But I cannot, because I do not
own it. Saying I want to is an empty gesture, in my opinion.
MSX Association could have seen this coming. If a GPLed emulator was their
goal, they should not have started with fMSX as their codebase. Stating
(approximately) two years later that Marat does not allow them to release MSX
Player under GPL is a bit misleading.
> But that is not a problem anymore. Last couple of month, several people
> have been working on a brand new MSX emulator, called OpenMSX. This MSX
> emulator is opensource. It has been rebuild from scratch, based on some new
> concepts regarding communication and synchronisation between the various
> processors in the MSX. This new communication and synchronisation model
> will eventually lead to a (near) perfect MSX emulation.
I know. :)
> ] What is "copyright of MSX"? MSX emulators are written using publicly
> ] available information and reverse engineering. There is no copyright
> ] necessary to create an MSX emulator.
>
> The copyright is on the base design.
I don't think the MSX standard is copyrighted. A certain implementation (MSX
machine blueprints) can be, or a book describing the standard. But not the
standard itself.
Note that I could summarise a book and place that summary online without
violating any copyrights. Only if I would duplicate sections longer than a
normal quotation from the book, it would violate copyrights.
Please view copyrights the way they were intended: to protect authors, so
that they can make a living off their creative works. Many companies are now
trying to use copyrights to gain as much money and control as possible, but
that is not what copyrights are for, and in many cases that is not what the
law provides for either. And don't make them fool you that the old rules no
longer apply just because content has gone digital.
> Normally, you need to take a license
> to build an MSX and use the MSX trade mark.
Is MSX a trade mark? Then why isn't there a "tm" or "(R)" on my 8250 boot
screen? Did Philips, Sony etc pay royalties to anyone? Doesn't a trade mark
expire if it isn't defended for a prolonged amount of time? Can you even
trademark three letters? (486 wasn't trademarkable.) I am not willing to
assume anyone has rights to MSX without proof.
> Note that building your own
> products based on reverse engineering is these days forbidden in the USA,
> thanks to the 'digital millenium rights act', which is some new legislation
> around copyright, etc that was created somewhere around 1999/2000.
I know and I am very much concerned about these kinds of laws. However,
fortunately until now Europe has remained mostly sane, so I am still able to
create MP3s of CDs I bought and to reverse engineer my MSX.
Bye,
Maarten
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