Re: QL Commercial Software Preservation
Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2015 7:34 pm
The QL demo version is on Dilwyns site 
I'm one ot itRWAP wrote:We always seem to have this same old argument - remember that I am the only person in the whole of the QL community who set out a few years ago specifically wanting to create a QL software preservation project and the QL Wiki, re-investing the few sales of QL items I get into the project, for minimal (or no) commercial return.
Although thankfully, I have a handful of helpers now, the amount of work to be done is huge and very few people ever come forward to offer to help update the Wiki, preserve software, or track down copyright holders. Even the massive SBASIC/SuperBASIC Reference Manual has now been made into an online version ready for the community to adopt and update - although apart from 2 people, no-one has come forward to ask about updating it or even rectifying the layout!.
I remain the only real QL trader in existence, and in fact the retro computing business is my only source of income. However, I constantly seem to be badgered by QLers who insist that everything I have preserved should be shoved onto a website somewhere so that all QLers 'can benefit' ie simply download what they want for free without a thought about copyright. I have preserved 100s of titles over the past 3-4 years, and spent many hours and ££££s collecting, preserving and getting working on modern systems.
Sorry I am not willing to simply hand that over - it makes no commercial sense whatsoever.
So again, I re-iterate:
The preserved stuff has several arms:
a) Where we can we track down the copyright holder and obtain their permission for software to be re-released either commercially or as freeware. Unfortunately, it always seems to be left to me to track them down and most are not easy to find!
b) We preserve the software and they are stored on dropbox for security
c) If people have originals of the software which no longer works, then we offer them the possibility of obtaining a working copy.
As for removal of copy protection - in most cases I have no idea who removed the protection and what good is a protected piece of software which simply does not work on modern systems or even the original QLs due to failure of microdrive cartridges. A lot of software was actually released as a later free update without copy protection where companies realised that people wanted disk based versions!
If I am in breach of copyright over (c) then fair enough - I could simply remove the page and people won't be able to obtain working copies of their software and the QL will simply die completely. However, I am willing to take the commercial risk over those limited number of titles on my website, particularly since looking at the list on my site, the majority of titles did not have copy protecton anyway or I have the rights to publish!
As for what you do with the rest of the software that is preserved where copyright holders have either just disappeared (or do not respond to letters and emails), or have denied distribution completely, I have no idea what to do. I do not have time to spend chasing up copyright holders.
If someone wants to take the commercial risk and set up some sort of site similar to World of Spectrum which basically ignores copyright and takes a risk, then that is up to them - feel free to start your own preservation project. But, if you do that you have to ensure that commercially available titles are NOT included (that is where the huge argument arose a couple of years ago over one Spanish site who knew some titles were still available to purchase commercially but simply ignored it completely and added them to their site).
On the other hand, if you want to turn your hand to helping track down and contact copyright holders to obtain their legitimate consent, then feel free - there are 100s of people to find....
And we are trying to preserve ALL KIND of SW: Commercial, PD (most of all RARE Italian Stuff), all that we have or found on eBay and all over the world.
Radastan help us with some precious and rare Cracked version, then from my italian restoration I've found many Italian cracked (and original) versions of the same stuff of Rich that works better on 128k systems and Rom MGI (our Italian Rom).
I've sent today to Rich a full explanation of the collaborators on this project because he have the copyright of many Commercial SW.
Rich help us sending the MD VER of many of my Original Md stuff that don't work (or I can't preserve at 100%).
We are also make and test (with Daniele Terdina) a new mDump version (2.0) that will check and re-pass the bad sectors of the MD's and then compare the images for retrying to load the bad sector only.
We are trying to to all MD dumps possible for preserve the ORIGINAL MD as no more other (than Rich) have done in the past.
Next we will make a new QL site:
https://www.facebook.com/QL.QuantumTech ... ef=profile
http://www.quantum.altervista.org
Where put only the Shareware stuff but we will advice of all other stuff too (download not possible).
All will be checked by Rich that knows all about that.
In my opinion for preserve all I prefer to get in touch with all stuff and next ask to Rich what to do.
The work that are doing Rich for re release stuff in original art state is very impressive and I hope It will continue to do it.
If someone want to help us in the preservation can contact me: we hare more than 1000 md's to dump and a lot of Disks too and I will check all over the world every day
Best ragards to all.
