Re: Superdrive 2000?

On 6/6/2018 7:15 AM, smf wrote:
> On 06/06/2018 01:13, Jim Brain wrote:
>
>> Sure, that is possible, but highly impractical.
>
> Copyright law doesn't have an exemption that permits violating 
> copyright just because it makes things harder for you.
Sigh.  I'm not arguing that fact.  You stated:  "There just wouldn't be 
the need of copying any of CBM code." and I am rebutting that argument.  
THere would have been a need.  And, that need would have required some 
minimal licensing of the ROM object code.

> CBM must have granted CMD a license at some point. 
I agree.  I think I've agreed with this each time you've stated it, save 
the first time, and I was only trying to make a point then that CMD 
would not have obtained an unfettered license.
> That license either gave CMD permission to sell licenses to the drive 
> manufacturers and they conveniently missed that out in court, or it 
> didn't give them permission but they didn't understand or care about 
> the terms and still took the money.
Since I can think of dozens of other scenarios (CBM put restrictions on 
license, CMD noted restrictions to FSD, FSD ignored.  FSD negotiated 
rights to sell JiffyDOS ROMs as ROMs, and then internally sold them to 
themselves, etc.), I can't agree with your position. You're choosing to 
believe 2 of the possibilities most damaging to CMD and then castigating 
CMD under the guise that those 2 scenarios are the only ones possible.  
I won't go there.  That's not fair to the company, regardless of who 
they are.  If CMD had otherwise shown themselves to be unscrupulous or 
unethical, I'd be more inclined to agree, but I see no other evidence.  
We know CMD and CBM had a pretty cozy relationship, as CBM attempted to 
incorporate the JiffyDOS commands and such into BASIC 7.0.  The evidence 
points to CBM  and CMD trusting each other, and CBM asking CMD to help 
them in this case.
>
> While I understand the desire to give people the benefit of the doubt. 
> Not understanding or caring when selling licenses to people already in 
> litigation with CBM, when CBM were refusing to license the drive roms 
> (either at all or JiffyDOS was a cheaper option) there isn't really 
> any doubt they could benefit from.
If CMD was only licensing the JD code fragments, they could negotiate 
with FSD at any time, without any concerns.  And, we all know the FSD 
drives was manufactured under different names.  It is entirely possible 
the entity that negotiated with CMD was not FSD or Oceanic but some 
company name not in litigation with CBM.  I think we can all agree that 
the manufacturer of the drive was not entirely ethical, so creating 
shell companies to purchase legit JD to bypass litigation concerns seems 
hardly outside their scope.
I feel we've reach the end of this discussion.  We all agree CMD had a 
license to the CBM code of some type.  You feel confident CMD 
misunderstood their license or misrepresented their license terms in 
court.  You feel CMD exploited their position by selling to the drive 
manufacturer.  I see no other evidence to show bias and so I disagree 
with those points.  The license is not visible to us, so we can't 
currently research it.  I posit that the word "overlay" is legally 
important.  I further posit that copying the CBM object code into a 
replacement ROM was the only practical way to provide a speeder ROM.

Without Mark Fellows, Charles Christensen Jr, or Sr., or Doug Cotton 
dropping by, I doubt we'll get more clarity.

Jim


-- 
Jim Brain
brain@jbrain.com
www.jbrain.com