Spectrum ROMs in RPM Fusion

[Andrea Musuruane]

On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 7:51 PM, Lucian Langa<cooly at gnome.eu.org> wrote:
>> Can you please tell me why? I cant see the difference between
>> fuse-emulator and FBZX.
>
> There is no difference between the two but the current rules forbids it:
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:SoftwareTypes
>
>
>> Emulators
>> Most emulators (applications which emulate another platform) are not
>> permitted for inclusion in Fedora. The rule of thumb to follow is: If
>> it requires ROMs (or image files in any format) of copyrighted or
>> patented material to be useful (and the owners of those copyrights and
>> patents have not given their express written permission), then it's
>> not permitted.
>
> Which is a total crap.
> In the past it was possible to include FOSS emulator and remove roms as
> it was done for fuse. Now I do not know exactly where it stands as
> guidelines are intentionally made vague about this.

Amstrad, the copyright owner of Spectrum ROMs has give express written
permission to use the ROMs:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.amstrad.8bit/msg/c092cc4d4943131e

Therefore Spectrum emulators are OK in Fedora.

> If you do a search by closed review requests for term "emulator" you'll
> see that most of emulators were rejected.

Simcoupe, a SAM Coupé emulator got included because of the same reason:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=444225

And it's ROMs even in Fedora because the copyright holder of the SAM
Coupé ROM (Andrew Wright) and he has given permission to freely
redistribute it:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=444224

As I understand, Amstrad do not want 3rd party to ship Spectrum ROMs
for profit, which is something is possible using Fedora, therefore the
ROMs aren't allowed in Fedora in this case.

> You can take this with FESCO or block it for legal but you'll just waste
> time and perhaps get fuse removed from fedora too.
> I've submitted for review other emulator which didn't require any roms
> at that time and it is still not accepted at this time.
> It's really clear that no emulator is welcomed in fedora, fuse case (and
> perhaps one or two more) was just a lucky one so I'm trying not to stir
> any waters because with the current rules I doubt fuse is valid for
> fedora.

As I said, IMHO fuse is safe too.

Bye,

Andrea.