Russ Perry Jr wrote:
> Heh. Well, there might be a quicker way to check... Look for a
> copyright string around $0AA0 in PICKLOCK. I assume he meant it
> was ASCII text... If there, it's Harry's; if not, we're clear
> (well, other than the potential Hasbro issues we've discussed in
> the past).
Yep, there's a copyright message there all right. But, it says copyright
Atari, not Harry Dodgson or Video 61.
Fortunately there are other possibilities. The following games also have
back doors:
Basketbrawl
Double Dragon
F18 Hornet
Food Fight
Galaga
Joust
Kung Fu Master
Pete Rose Baseball
Tomcat F14
Title Match Pro Wrestling
So who knows? Maybe if somebody buys a Joust cart from O'Sheas, pinches a
few KB of code to get the encryption key passed and the startup vectors, and
then replaces the Joust game code with their own game code, solders a new
EPROM into the cart and ships it, buying a fresh copy of Joust for every
game of their own that they ship, maybe that's O.K. to do. Chances are
people producing small quantities of games may be buying one of the above
carts for their games anyway.
But back to Video 61. What's the worst case scenario? What if PICKLOCK is
*identical* to 4KB of Harry's cart? Does that necessarily mean that using
PICKLOCK is infringing on Harry? Maybe, but not necessarily. It really
depends on the contract between Harry/Video 61 and Atari. But I'll spare
you the argument. ;-) I'd rather wait and find out if Lance really has a
problem with PICKLOCK or not.
> That wasn't my concern -- my concern was that it might stifle
> development if programmers are afraid that they'll get sued for
> posting anything. This is issue I haven't yet discussed with
> Lance at Video61 -- a development list REQUIRES sharing code;
> that brings the risk that a BIN might escape into the wild without
> the proper licensing. How do we balance that out?
I don't know Russ. It would be nice if Video 61 would lighten up a bit with
the saber rattling. Then maybe it would be easier for people to see them as
a possibly valuable service provider for helping people to publish games.
All this talk about legal stuff only makes me defensive and certainly
doesn't predispose me to consider them as a publishing option.
As far as I'm concerned, people should have a right to write games for a
machine if they want. The first amendment and free speech need to be
balanced too. And the exclusionary licensing stuff is only borderline legal
anyway -- if that. This is something Microsoft seems to be finding out
lately.
As for what gets posted on the list, that's up to Glenn I think. If he
wants to change his guidelines then he can tell us. But I'm leaving
PICKLOCK up on my web site until I become convinced that it is actually
infringing on Harry/Video 61, or somebody from Atari/Hasbro tells me they're
having a problem with it. In fact we'll be posting a new version soon
showing how to use 7800 interrupts. And I'll probably be posting plans soon
on how to build a 48K RAM cart. It's actually easier to build than the 32K
one.
> Well, I wanted to be absolutely sure of that. I'm trying to warn
> Lance that 7800 development has already started, and so he can't
> assume that any game released violates his code. The last thing
> we need is court cases ruining the retro scene.
I agree Russ. This stuff is supposed to be fun.
> That begs a question... Can you put 2600 games on 7800 boards?
Yes, I believe so. I think you can write large flat-model (up to 48K) or
bankswitched (up to 128K) 2600 games and put them on a 7800 cart no problem.
No encryption problems if you don't turn on the Maria chip.
John
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