What is abandonware and what is not?

[cobito]

Hello. In the coming days I want to start with the abandonware section of the museum. I've been reading a bit about the legalities of the matter and it seems that basically it's a gamble. I understand, for example, that putting old games that have been remastered or that are simply still for sale in their original version through digital platforms is not a good idea (Age of Empires 2 or Commander Keen among others).

Then I think about things like the Encarta encyclopedia, which have been outdated for a couple of decades but where, in reality, most of the content has not changed in all this time. Here I see a medium risk although I have seen that it is relatively easy to find it on other sites.

And to finish, I come up with programs like any version of MS-DOS or Windows 95 of which, to this day, it is impossible to obtain any economic benefit and are systems that are out of place in any field. Here, the risk seems to me low or null.

Do you know of any rule a bit more rigorous about this?

[Fassou]

According to the definition of Wikipedia, it is all illegal except for the almost non-existent cases in which the company that owns the rights disappears without handing over its rights to others, they expressly release them, or these have expired (95 years since their publication).

The most pursued are copies in formats different from those originally distributed such as ROMs or MP3s (ripped), but one must also take into account the Mickey Mouse Law that threatens anyone who copies content created in the USA (in practice, for centuries).

In your case, I would be satisfied with providing links to tools hosted on other sites, and websites specializing in software for old computers, especially in its Linux side

Salu2!

[whoololon]

Exactly.

And it's a pain in the ass, because those of us who like retro have to put a patch on our eye and go stranjis.

In any case, there is a pretty generous margin in the fact that the owning company doesn't exist... like FriendWare for example. With others you have to be careful because they were bought by other companies that are still active, like Sierra that was bought by Activision/Blizzard.

But there are also things that were freeware, like the first versions of RAR or ImpulseTracker.

Regarding games, on the Wikipedia there is an updated list of titles that have become freeware; although it doesn't imply that they are free to distribute.

Likewise, I agree that, to avoid trouble, the healthiest thing is to link to third-party pages.

[cobito]

In the end I will do the link topic. Now with the magazines I have the same doubts that I suppose will end up being the same. I have been doing OCRs, indexes and writing a search engine for a few days and the truth is that I find it interesting to have the possibility of searching text in thousands of magazines. I suppose that here I will do like Google: show only the page where the text that has been searched appears.

The truth is that what a hassle with copyrights. I don't know who will be able to make an economic profit from the Prince of Persia or a Micromanía from 98 or what harm can be done by publishing things like this, but anyway.

[lorTnuyosoN]

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