Date   : Tue, 05 Mar 1996 12:00:28 GMT
From   : wturner@... (William Turner)
Subject: Re: BBC: Radical rethinks! :-)

Phil wrote:
> I wrote... 
> > Sorry, but it is illegal to use the ROMs on anything but Acorn/BBC 
> > _hardware_
> > This does indeed make _any_ use of the ROMs for an emulator illegal...
> 
> William - are you then saying that the current crop of emulators are 
> illegal if they use copies of the ROMs?

Technically, yes.

> What is Acorn's official stance on the emulators currently being written? 
> Are they going to effectively
> turn a blind eye as long as the ROM images aren't being openly 
> distributed, or are they eventually going to get bloody minded and stamp 
> on the distribution of ALL Beeb emulators?

I honestly can't answer this one on my own, and the person responsible for
licensing etc our technology is out of the office today. He'll be back
tomorrow though, so if no-one has any objections, I'll show him this bunch of
articles, and ask him to make some sort of statement.
 
> If the latter then I'm sure other readers of this group will be rather 
> unhappy, to say the least. 

Hopefully, this won't happen.

> > People: PLEASE respect our copyright! Doing things like this is _not_
> > furthering the cause to get the ROMs released!
> 
> What is the current situation here? Are any discussions taking place?

As I'm sure many of you well be aware, there has been somewhat of a large
shake-up in the organisation of Acorn Group PLC over the last few months.

A result of this is that the chain of command has changed greatly, so I
shall have another go at getting an official statement of the situation.

> I'm sure a lot of people DO respect your copyright, but equally don't 
> Acorn realise that these emulators exist
> because of a love of the Beeb? - they're not trying to rip off Acorn 

I personally, am well aware of this, and am making others aware of
this also.

> (those writing the emulators certainly aren't making any money out of it, 
> and those using the emulators are simply doing it for the fun of having a 
> Beeb on their PC/Mac/NeXt machines and indulging in a little nostalgia). 
> Surely Acorn can understand this and release the ROMs into the Public 
> Domain?

It's not quite that simple. There is still stuff in the ROMs that has
commercial value to us (BBC Basic springs to mind). Making the ROMs
publically available makes it much more difficult for us to maintain
control over this material. Also, like I said, the decision is not
purely down to Acorn Computers....

William