I wouldn't buy anything off of them - loads of titles for £5 sort of scream somewhat dubious distribution to me!

And trying to sell things as 're-mastered' is pretty laughable 😀

From their so called FAQ:

Q: What do we sell?

A: All the games mentioned on this site are Abandonware. We do not sell these games. What we do sell, is the ability to play these games on Windows XP. The money that you pay, is ONLY buying our software and packaging costs.

In other words, they probably just sell you a copy of DOSBox.

Which is legal as long as they give you the source, keep copyright and credits intact, and so on (the usual GPL stuff). Claiming that it is their software might stretch the limits a bit, but as long as the sold software complies, I guess there's not much we can complain about.

Distributing abandonware is illegal, however, rgeardless of price, but that's a different matter and has nothing to do with dosbox.

Plus, seeing "Download all the latest PC games Now! £6.95" on their main page isn't doing much to convince me that they're interested in legitimacy. The Wikipedia "cite" on the definition of abandonware in their FAQ is good for a laugh, too. (The real Wiki article says nothing of the sort.)

I have sent mail to rms and fsf-europe about this issue.

I have also sent this mail to Steve Burnett, who has recently posted a review to the website citing his worries about a purchase of a product that he says that was, in reality, a copy of Limewire (GPL'd software too).

At the product description page (http://www.classicgamingpresents.com/catalog/ … products_id/156) we can read:

We are the exclusive distributors of this software and you can only get it from us... Don't be fooled by the cheap imitations out there on the internet.

and also:

'Satellite TV for PC?' is the product of more than 7 years of dedicated research and development. The development costs of this product alone are more than $276,480. The product required 3 years of intense testing and development utilizing software developers from Microsoft, IBM and other leading technology companies.

Here is the mail I have just sent him:

Hi, Steve I have seen your "1 of 5" review at "classic gaming presents". (http://www.classicgamingpresents.com/catalog/ … 6/rev […]
Show full quote

Hi, Steve
I have seen your "1 of 5" review at "classic gaming presents".
(http://www.classicgamingpresents.com/catalog/ … 6/reviews_id/21)

I have recently noticed something that raised some concern about this
company. See the email that I have forwarded to you. Can you help us
to find out the info we need in order to verify the issue?

I would like to know whether there is any file on the products that
you have purchased that contains the GPL license (i.e. the terms of
use of the software). I am talking about this:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.txt Is this text available on the
package that you have purchased?

We suspect that this company is committing copyright infringiments on
software that is developed globally by the freesoftware community
(limewire and dosbox) and that should remain free for every user.
Software freedom is not only a political view about software
development but also something enforceable by means of copyrigth law.
All info that you could provide is precious.

I hope it helps.

felipe.sanches wrote:

I have sent mail to rms and fsf-europe about this issue.

And why should they care? The FSF has been kind enough to put a license-text that a lot of other developers (including DOSBox devs) have chosen to use for their project - in this case the COPYING.TXT file that comes with DOSBox. Why would the FSF care that some person/company is, or is not, violating DOSBox's license?

well they do somewhat claim that it is their software that provides the ability to run the games on XP.
That is not very kind if they are using DOSBox.

I think UFO is available on gametap. they probably don't like it either.
railroad tycoon deluxe is also sold. I doubt they have the rights to that.
I'll ask my 2k games contact about it.

Why would the FSF care that some person/company is, or is not, violating DOSBox's license?

Because they are committed to the free software cause in general. I suppose that any issue related to the subject could be of their interest. At least for informative reasons, but possibly also for taking some kind of action. If user's freedoms are someway denyied, FSF people certainly will care about the issue.