On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 11:01 PM, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 7:36 PM, Michael Robinson > <plu...@robinson-west.com> wrote: >> There has been quite a bit of talk about AST hardware needing special >> drivers even under DOS. Well, if the company won't put the drivers in >> the public domain and there aren't very many AST computers in the world, >> the logical thing to do is recycle the ones that are left and replace >> them. Am I missing something? Are AST computers superior to normal PC >> compatibles? > > It's probably fair use to backup copies of drivers if the company goes > offline. Redistributing might not be allowed, though honestly if it's > available nowhere else (and not charged for), I don't see the harm. > > Otherwise, yeah, I don't see any better answer than dropping them, but > that's a horribly sad and useless "solution". [..]
Mirroring "abandonware" drivers is a bit uncertain - unless the license says we can redistribute them. I agree the original copyright holder probably doesn't care; they've gone out of business. But according to Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AST_Research> as of early 2011, the dormant AST trademark appears to be being relaunched by a new, independent company named DATA ACCESS based in France. I don't know if that means they purchased the previous copyrights (Beny Alagem, founder of Packard Bell Electronics, bought the name and intellectual property of AST Research, Inc. in 1999.) If they have purchased them, they would probably have an issue with us redistributing AST's previously "abandoned" drivers. I don't want to risk damaging the FreeDOS Project by mirroring these driverse (if the license doesn't say we can redistribute them) then get a C&D letter. We don't have resources to defend ourselves legally. It's not an ideal situation for these old drivers, but we need to be careful here. And I'll admit that I'm not sufficiently motivated to comb through all the driver zip files (I assume zip) and read all the Readme & License files, just to see if we can redistribute them. I'll leave that to someone with more free time. :-) -jh ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
