22.Dec.2015
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Ralph Schmidt: Amiga Forever contains unlicensed copies of the Cyberstorm ROMs
The emulator distribution Amiga Forever 2016, released in November, contains images of the CyberstormPPC ROMs to simplify the installation of AmigaOS 4 for the end user. As this fact was not mentioned in the official press releases, it only became known when the download edition of OS4 Classic was discussed on amiga-news.de. During said discussion Ralph Schmidt, author of the ROMs in question, issued a statement (German) regarding the legal status of his work included with Amiga Forever.
In both his comment and a mail exchange with amiga-news.de staff, Schmidt states that Cloanto does not have a licence to distribute complete ROMs. He points out that official Flash updates are still legally available from Aminet amongst other places. When approached by us, Michael Battilana from Cloanto rejected Schmidt's claim and stressed repeatedly that he's still convinced he owns a valid licence for distributing the files.
Cloanto provided amiga-news.de staff with excerpts from the mail exchange between Battilana and Schmidt from 2014. A short look at the statements from both parties in these mails suggests that a simple misunderstanding is the cause of the problem, but neither party was interested in discussing details.
Ralph Schmidt explains that he will not take any legal steps, since that "wouldn't make any sense". If and how Cloanto will react to this situation is currently not known to us. (cg)
[News message: 22. Dec. 2015, 20:15] [Comments: 0]
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