In France, abandonware is illegal too unless the author give the permission to redistribute his software for free. That named this intellectual property and it is valid up to 70 years. There is still a problem when the software is owned by a company which has closed. In this case, I think the orginal author (the person) retake his right of property. It is because I'm searching to enter in contact with Alexandre GASSMANN (the author of Nebula II) but I can't find him.
To be more positive on http://www.lankhor.net/ you can find some software edited by Lankhor as they seems to give their permission. Jimmy. >-----Message d'origine----- >De : [EMAIL PROTECTED] >[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] De la part de David McCann >Envoyé : mardi 27 février 2007 17:36 >À : [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Objet : [ql-users] Abandonware + Retro computing > >Although English law does not recognise the concept of >abandonware, it would not be a good move for software authors >to sue someone for distributing software which has long since >ceased to be sold. English copyright law only allows >compensation to be paid on the basis of lost >revenue: if the income from your product is zero, you don't >have much of a claim! The best they could do is seek an >injunction to stop you distributing, which would be a waste of >time and money on their part. > >The other day I ran into http://www.machine-room.org This is a >virtual museum of old computers. The webmaster has some >interesting comments (see the FAQ page) on how much you can do >with an old machine and the sense in sticking with a system >that works. It seems that an Apple II and some BBC Bs are >still doing their stuff for Edingburgh University! >_______________________________________________ >QL-Users Mailing List >http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm > _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
