Phreeze wrote:so dan86 with 5 posts including these 2: what is your point ?
I think dan86 is trying to point out that forum administration and moderation have a somewhat nuanced opinion of sales and see no issue in being inconsistent in generally allowing "sweat of the brow" reproduction/etc. projects versus just bulk dump reselling some used third-party gear.
Yes, we do.
And that's not all.
We also generally support Marvin members BIOS dumping and videocard firmware dumping and offering it on VOGONS/VOGONSDrivers to help support upgrade and repair, but do not support offering "ROMz" for Roland products (famously litigious) or for use in other emulators here.
(In addition, we do not recommend that emulator authors bundle their needed firmware, OS's and other software and recommend instead that they distribute just the emulator and leave the software distribution to the users.)
We generally endorse people making full images of driver discs (provided there's no full editions of software/games included with them) or scanning manuals and offering them for download on VOGONSDrivers - even though that's still technically copyright infringement.
We'll permit linking to archive.org for some things (say, a much needed videogame patch) but not for other things (complete commercial versions of videogames).
We love talking about and developing all the compatibility patches needed to make retro videogames work in modern Windows, but forbid the linking to full copies of "abandonware". Nor do we support distributing pre-patched games without having a right to do so: distribute only the files needed to patch the game, and take every action to eliminate software code belonging to the original developers from your patch.
And I personally have been a DOSBox beta tester (back when it was in private beta testing nearly two decades ago) and have worked on the MAME project for over 19 years, I know my way around abandonware and ROM sites (though I haven't needed either for many many years). And the views I held in my earliest posts here are not what they are now.
dan86 - this world isn't as black and white as you want, and is never gonna be.
Point and laugh all you want at hypocrisy, doublethink, or cognitive dissonance - but to be a forum member here, you are going to need to live with it.
"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen
Stiletto