Re: Migration of non-free packages to testing
On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 07:23:39PM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 08:01:35PM +0100, Bernd Eckenfels wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 06:50:08PM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> > > software - even if the copyright holders wanted it to be, they've lost
> > > the source code.
> >
> > there is no problem with that. You can take the output of an disassembler
> > and publish it, if the copyright holder does allow it.
>
> /usr/share/doc/spectrum-roms/zx82.htm
>
> ... but I'm not sure it's canonical yet.
>
> Anyway, certainly there is nothing anyone outside Amstrad can do to
> produce a completely free Spectrum emulator, in contrast to the usual
> case where a reimplementation can be created.
Well, presumably one could, theoretically, produce a clean-room
implementation of the ROM by creating an implementation of the
interface which is expected by the Amstrad software out there. Either
this interface is published (?), or it can be painfully derived by
inspecting the available amstrad software.
I'm not suggesting it would be easy, or a particularly useful use of
time, but I don't think it is impoessible...
Jules
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