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From: fouts@AMES-NAS.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari16
Subject: Re: MAC emulator (ROM Legality)
Message-ID: <8609261614.AA20837@ames-nas.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 26-Sep-86 12:14:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames-nas.8609261614.AA20837
Posted: Fri Sep 26 12:14:43 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Sep-86 03:18:28 EDT
References: <3651@ism780c.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 34


     Magic Sac itself doesn't include any Apple code.  Rather, you must
buy a set of ROMs from Apple yourself.

     Although not yet tested in court, there is precedence in the
assumption that Apple cannot restrict sales of the ROMs to people who
don't own MacIntoshes, stemming from the observation that mainframe
vendors are required to sell their software to customers of plug
compatable machines.  (We run MVS and VM on our Amdahls, for example.)

     The same assumption is being applied to the system and finder
images which are also required to make Magic Sac work.  I bought my
system and finder from a licensed Apple developer.  His license with
Apple allows him to include system and finder images in the software he
sells, and (he claims, I haven't read it) does not restrict him to
sales only to Apple owners.

     However, Apple will not allow Data Pacific to resell the ROMs, or
license Data Pacific for the system and finder images.  This is also in
accordance with precedence.  (We get our MVS from IBM not Amdahl.)

     There are three separate legal issues in the Magic Sac, all of
which Data Pacific believes they have correctly handled.  The first two
are the ROMS and system images mentioned above.

     The third is if Magic itself violates any Apple copyrights or
patents.  Since Magic is only a translator which intercepts some of the
behavior of the Macintosh software and makes it work on the Atari
hardware, rather than an emulator, it looks to me as if it doesn't
violate any copyrights, etc.

Marty

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