This preservation process always faces a huge hurdle because the original authors may not care but also don't care enough to reach out and say it is ok since the QL scene is so small. If you look at my
https://zxsimulator.orgfree.com/ page you see that I have software running in a QL emulator on a webpage. Presently you can look at its source and find the zip file that contains QLAY and all the software it uses and download it, but I wonder if you can set permissions so that wouldn't work, and only DOSBox could see its information.
If that part could be made secure, I wonder if we could set up a repository of runnable software that cannot be distributed, that would show it in action. That way, it may get the original author's attention and either they ask to take it down so it can be sold, or give permission to distribute it. It wouldn't be 100% clean, because the person running the site would have a copy (not just the owner) but it would prevent it from just being easily downloadable and distributed (so mostly holding true to the copyright). That way we'd have it in a central location of lost software and people could run it from a webpage to see how it worked (think of it as being a demo of it). So it's preserved but not available for distribution. A less interesting way would be a video of each software in action, which would be totally ok, but that is more boring than actually getting to try it out.
from Somerset please?
