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From: U5569462@ucsvc.unimelb.edu.au (DAVID CLUNIE)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Official legal stuff & all that ...
Message-ID: <142@ucsvc.unimelb.edu.au>
Date: 27 Jun 89 10:54:41 GMT
Organization: The University of Melbourne
Lines: 50

The recent heated discussion concerning the alleged distribution of
source code to some part of the Macintosh ROM set, raises an interesting
question. Why has no one cloned the Macintosh ROM's ?

The IBM PC family ROM's have been independently cloned many times over. I
appreciate the fact that the complexity of the Macintosh ROM's are at least
an order of magnitude greater, but surely this should not deter an enterprising
programmer.

I have heard it said that the definition of the interface to the ROM's is not
sufficiently clearly defined to allow this to be done. Surely however, close
examination of the behaviour of existing Macintosh programs, and the code
within the ROM's, should clarify any questions in this regard.

It amazes me that no one has ever widely distributed an annotated disassembly
of the Mac ROM's. While I suspect (though do not definitely know) that
distribution of such might be a breach of copyright, the act of dissassembly,
and the subsequent use of the knowledge thereby obtained, may well be quite
legal. Any moral or ethical considerations are of course irrelevant, given
the vast profit that the first MAC ROM clone makers will net if they can
survive the inevitable legal onslaught from Apple. The most sensible approach
would probably be to do this in some country out of reach of Apple's legal
tentacles eg. Taiwan. (The IBM clone makers got away with it despite IBM's
vast resources).

Regretably, I cannot really afford the time to embark on this myself. I don't
use Mac's, and I can't afford them given the relatively low performance of
the hardware. Many of my initially less computer literate colleagues do
however, and it is said to watch them eagerly devouring the friendly user
interface, but suffering under the burden of poor performance due to an over
loaded processor driving slow disks on a tiny (and frankly ugly) monochrome
screen.

What is needed is a Mac IICX clone that costs as little as comparably
equipped IBM clone. All we need is a MAC ROM clone to achieve this end !

So go to it Mac programmers ... and if you don't want to worry about the
legal hassles, develop it and give it away anonymously. Then the hardware
clone makers will flourish, and you will be secure in the knowledge that
although you didn't make any money out of it, you were responsible for
bringing the Macintosh to the millions around the world who would really
like one but just can't justify the exorbitant cost.

Beats wasting your time writing yet another file compression program, or
icon editor, or animation program, etc. There are already plenty of those.

But please, please, don't get to carried away with the social engineering
bit and become another Richard Stallman. Spare us that.

Regards  ... David