QL Commercial Software Preservation

[RWAP]

Not quite - it is actually 70 years plus lives in being - normally 70 years from when the author died (if the author is identified):

https://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copy ... 0_duration

[radastan]

Not quite - it is actually 70 years plus lives in being - normally 70 years from when the author died (if the author is identified):

https://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copy ... 0_duration

False.

In SOFTWARE is 50 years. See my link, is very explicit, and it's the law.

All commercial software is from a company, copyrighted by it, not from an author. Very few software was distributed by the author. That's the motive for 50 years in software.

And more important... ¿they renove copyright? You MUST renove copyright or you lost them. You are asking authors, ¿Are you asking for the copyright renovation certificate?

[tofro]

I'm definitely unsure whether someone will be looking for QL Software 20 years from now.....
And even more unsure in 40 years. That discussion is moot. So better calm down

Tobias

[radastan]

I'm definitely unsure whether someone will be looking for QL Software 20 years from now.....
And even more unsure in 40 years. That discussion is moot. So better calm down

Tobias

Some people still wants to make money of a program/videogame they writed 30 years ago.

That's the problem.

[RWAP]

Something is wrong in your argument and this is probably down to the interpretation of that link you referred to. The 50 years is specifed as 'work that is computer generated'.

Arguably compiled programs could be classed as 'computer generated' but certainly I don't see how that could apply to SuperBASIC programs, or even assembler programs.

The UK government website does not agree with that link you referred to either:
https://www.gov.uk/copyright/how-long-copyright-lasts

A large amount of software for the QL was not issued by a limited company - normally by a one man band (sometimes the author, sometimes a publishing house).

In any case it is very much a moot point. Under UK (and European) law, copyrighted works do not have to be registered anywhere - you just have to prove that you wrote or created them, so there is no need to renew anything..... There is an online copyright register service - but that is basically just a tool to help people prove when they wrote or created something if they ever had to take it to court. A letter, advert or similar from back in the day is more than enough to prove the copyright.

[RWAP]

Some people still wants to make money of a program/videogame they writed 30 years ago.
That's the problem.

That is not necessarily the case - let's face it no-one makes money out of the QL world (and probably haven't since Digital Precision shut up shop in about 1992).

If we can find and get copyright holders to respond to queries, the vast majority are happy for it to be released as freeware (where else do you think all of the new software on the Sinclair QL Homepage has come from over the past year or so?). Some copyright holders are unable to give their permission for other reasons (for example, they are a joint copyright holder and cannot contact the other person, or some of the code has gone on to be included in another commercial product, or some of the code is reliant on a license from another company). There are, however, a few would rather the items remain available on a commercial basis which is up to them - there is always the chance that there could be a mini-revival and then what happens? That is up to the copyright authors as to what they want to do with it and we should all respect that.

If you compare it to books - how many books written back in the 40s are now made freely available ? My guess is a small percentage - compare that to how many books written in the 40s have seen a new lease of life, as people have decided to buy an e-book version to read on a electronic reader device...

The Spectrum Vega and Elite Bluetooth keyboard have shown how many software authors have felt that they have missed out - as new hardware has been released aimed at the mass market, selling (or advertising) 1000s of games provided in the price of the hardware, but the software authors not receiving a penny for their work. In fact the Elite situation was made even worse, with Elite selling packages of games to be played, when it transpired that they were not paying royalties to the vast majority of authors, who then ended up taking Elite to court to get the games packages withdrawn from the market. Whether they all ever got the royalties due is unknown.

We seem to have this discussion every few months and what is the result?

1) We all agree that more QL software needs to be made available for download and use on modern systems
2) Those who believe that ALL QL software should now be free moan and grumble, but then give up arguing.
3) Those who want to protect the rights of the copyright holders continue to maintain their view

Thanks to (1) and (3) generally we end up with a little more effort being made to preserve QL software and track down the copyright holders. Unfortunately no-one comes forward to help with those - especially those who take view (2).

I have to thank those who so far have come forward in the past 18 months to help me with the software preservation side of things.

Unfortunately, tracking down the copyright holders seems to be left entirely up to me. So I have to do this, as time, money and health allow (ie it has a very low priority in my life).

[radastan]

It's a ciclyc theme: copyright vs the world.

We are talking about a system with 30 years of age, make money these days with a copyright from 30 years ago is no sense. For a patetic amount of money your work is no accesible for the new generations.

At all, thanks to RWAP for your work to bring freeware something.

[vanpeebles]

I don't think the age really matters. I bought Rare Replay for my xbox one and that has a load of old speccy games on it.

[RWAP]

It's a ciclyc theme: copyright vs the world.

We are talking about a system with 30 years of age, make money these days with a copyright from 30 years ago is no sense. For a patetic amount of money your work is no accesible for the new generations.

At all, thanks to RWAP for your work to bring freeware something.

The same could be said about anything really where copyright is still applicable - TV programmes, films, books etc - but the fact is that they DO still manage to be accessible for new generations...

In reality, it is not just software which is the issue for the QL market - there are literally 100s of titles on Dilwyn's site for free download, but then people still struggle to get them onto a standard QL or even an emulator (mainly because the best QL emulator for running the old software is q-emulator, but people will not pay the registration fee to be able to load directly from a zip file, or run programs which need expanded memory).

The new QubIDE and QL-SD interfaces help, but unfortunately the developers cannot keep up with demand which is part of the issue over new projects which are not really commercialised.

As a trader it is all too easy to become disheartened by the QL scene which seems littered with people who want everything for nothing and yes, I have read the threads where I am called a robbing b**tard for daring to still charge for software, and where people moan and say that it is wrong for me to make any profit from their hobby... People are so easy to criticise and yet so unwilling to help do anything.

I could quite happily stick my two fingers up at them all and just shut up shop but then that would (I am sure) have a huge impact on the QL community - no more membranes or investment in them, no more QL Wiki, no more software preservation project, and no more spare parts..... I also doubt any more software would be made freeware, as no-one would step forward to track down copyright holders.

Whilst all of the other q-emulators are now thankfully freeware (or public domain), I have to commend Daniele Terdina and think that he is right in retaining a (albeit reasonable) registration fee - he is the only emulator author who is willing to spend time and energy tracking down why 30 year old software does not work correctly in the emulator and work out how to overcome it.

The only other maintained QL emulators are SMSQmulator (which is based solely on SMSQ/e) and QPC2 which also is based around SMSQ/e and whilst these do get updated for free, the authors have no incentive or desire to reverse engineer parts of them to support old software which is hardly used other than for playing games.

So, the question is (a) what software you would ideally like to see available again, and (b) how you are willing to get involved in order to make that happen.

From what I have preserved I think that there is very little good QL software out there which is no longer available, but is of interest to the QL community - but I stand to be corrected.....

[tofro]

Rich,

I very much appreciate what you (and the people supporting you) are doing.

But: Let's face it - (This is now my very personal opinion) There has been a lot of software around for the QL for Software development. But apparently, people seem to think there'd be a treasure chamber full of games gems hidden somewhere out there behind nasty capitalistic copyright owners. I think there isn't.

There were quite some games indeed, but nothing really unique where I'd say it'd urgently itch me to own that title. Compared to other micros, there's no such thing as the killer game (like Manic Miner on the Spectrum, Sun Dog on the Atari, M.U.L.E or Maniac Mansion for the C64, Elite on the BBC or Zarch for RiscOS) - The QL had only a very small number of above average games, and nothing really stunning. I like the fact that you're trying to preserve all of this stuff - But, alas, I think (again, my personal opinion) I don't need it ......

The QL used to be (and for me, still is) a development machine. There's no other micro of that that time that had that much programming languages and development tooling available given its really short commercial lifetime. And basically all of the really good tooling is still available and, even better, free.

If you want some good games: Come up with a good idea and write them yourselves!

Tobias