Disassembly of Apple II DeskTop a “Finder”-Like GUI for 8-Bit Apples | Hacker News Reader

Disassembly of Apple II DeskTop a “Finder”-Like GUI for 8-Bit Apples

github.com

61 pointsok12345613 comments

Pretty cool to see: amazing how much 6502 assembler I still remember after 36 years of not using it. I do wonder about the copyright issues here. I doubt that Apple would be all that concerned about this being released (back in the day there were printed books with disassemblies of a lot of the ROM code which were published openly), but technically, this is all still under copyright and there’s no indication that permission has been given to distribute the software in any form.

I remember seeing a proposal that copyrights should require a periodic renewal fee after some base period of time that could be paid indefinitely. This would guarantee that anything without commercial value would likely fall into the public domain while also satisfying the house of mouse’s desire to keep Steamboat Willie under copyright. For software, I could see that base period of time being relatively short to allow abandonware to be freely distributed and modified without fear of legal repercussions.

I am not familiar with the proposal to require a periodic renewal fee, but given that FSF's GPL is based on copyright, wouldn't that cause much of the source code to go free, thus nullifying the GPL?

Every push to the repo will create a new derivative work and reset the clock. If you don't pay, then your ten years old code will enter the public domain, but I would gladly agree to let anyone do whatever they want with my ten years old code if it meant better copyright laws.

So it isn't as bleak as I thought. Forking 10 years old code would not be desirable in most cases.

Maybe, but if source code was free, we wouldn’t need the GPL.

The GPL goal is to avoid commercial interests to restrict the freedom of the code you released to be free. Without the GPL, IBM could have taken GNU/Linux, added a lot of proprietary code to it, and released a new OS in the late 90s to compete with windows, but without giving their users the freedoms they have assured with GPL code. If your code could be appropriated like that by other entities, fewer people would botter with coding open source without monetary compensation.

Yes; of course. Sorry, I was thinking of the hypothetical scenario in which copyright was abolished.

> This would guarantee that anything without commercial value would likely fall into the public domain while also satisfying the house of mouse’s desire to keep Steamboat Willie under copyright.

I fail to see how this is any improvement, except for copyright holders. The entire point of copyright is to enrich the public domain after a period of exclusivity, not to use the public domain as a garbage can.

One could increase the fee for renewal with time. And it would prevent Disney from extending copyright perpetually for everything to protect Steamboat Willy.

If copyright extensions occurred before, why would this idea prevent new laws granting copyright extensions?

And a special salute to the person who decided to go to my website and try to leave the following anonymous comment (along with a racist fake email):

>Apple would never have considered any copyright or legal issues with that ancient forgotten software until they saw your comment and you reminded them. You're just manifesting the very problem you claim to be concerned about you stupid imperceptive autistic asshole. Delete your comment immediately.

Gotta love the self-righteousness here (and the assumption that if the claim were true that Apple issued a take-down order which I see no sign of) that they would do so because of a comment on the post and not the post itself). Anyway, anonymous commenter, I salute your linguistic creativity, your willingness to use others’ disabilities as an insult, your racism and your courage!

It's a good idea, but not that easy to realize: since copyright is automatic and not via registration (unlike patents) a renewal as proposed would actually constitute a first registration. This could make it very hard after that many years to ascertain that the renewer is actually the true owner.

Then, we return to the old system where registration is required within a timeframe of publication (and that only if you want to renew). So an unregistered copyright is good for n years and can’t be renewed.

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