The Sinclair QL Forum

polka wrote:First, what would be the use of MS.DOS on a QL ? One may play with it on a retro PC or in a DOS box ?

Then, about abandonware : the issue with D.P. conqueror (not being allowed to use it when you have not purchased it at times you could buy it - nor to upload it somehow for others to try it like "public domain"), this questions me also for ComputerOne FORTH (that I think is better than D.P. SuperForth - which is or isn't available as "public domain" ?).

Because : if D.P. conqueror is not allowed, why should D.P. SupperForth be ? or D.P. tiny C ? (both I have - rightly purchased a long time ago).

Hi,


SuperForth distributed by Digital precision was written by Gerry Anderson. Gerry has put SuperForth on Git Hub:

https://github.com/gerryjackson/QL-SuperForth

There was a comment, that if the distributer was unavaible, then the software has the last say on whether to issue the software to Public Domain.

DP Tiny C, I think you mean Digital C which is a version of Small C

I thought there was permission from Computer One for their products to be put into Public Domain.

Rich Mellor did a thankless job in trying trace the software authors to gain permission to issue the software to Public Domain.

With regards to Abandonware, the search in Google had many hits with software that is classed as Abandoned.

It is very confusing. Maybe the best way forward is to write new software...

Chr$ wrote:So you're free to share any QL software that was officially released in Romania before 1996!
There was no official QL importer in Romania was there? And therefore no Romanian software releases. Oh that bloody Iron Curtain malarky.

There was no importer in Romania - and no software releases. There were no computers sold either, except for companies.
But the law is not clear enough - it does not say "released in Romania" . It just says the software released after the law became active is copyrighted. And as the law was applied that simply meant "released anywhere in the world".
As a side note, that law cost me 250k $ in 1994 - the goverment issued a tender for "10.000 copies of a software that would allow the use of romanian special characters in any DOS and Windows applications" . I had the only such software at that time (I wrote it in 1991), and also had created 150 fonts for use under DOS, Windows and GEM (Ventura Publisher was running under GEM, and it was the main desktop publishing software at that time). The goverment asked for a working copy to test - and I gave them one. Then I just received a call telling me that because there is no copyright law they will just use my software and not pay me anything.

B'stards!

Related to this thread... look, this is MS-DOS 6.22 Editor running on a BBQL with SGC!

It's really is very slow though. No idea how long it took to load as I thought it had hung, went away, watched some YouTube Vids, came back and there it was.

You press a key and 2 seconds later the letter appears on screen!

Floppy access seems very slow though, like it reads something, waits 2 seconds, then reads another little something, etc.

Can this experience be sped up by loading Lightning first? Or anything else. I'll see if I can try it out on the Q40 at some point (assume I have to load/run QDOS Classic first?).

Hi Chr$,

I doubt that Lightning will have much effect, it speeds up screen handling only -- as far as I remember. Possibly some maths too, but I'm not sure about that. I suspect the MS-DOS editor is not going to get very much faster, if at all. Still, who knows?


Cheers,
Norm.

In UK, a lot depends on the contract between the software author and the publisher as to copyright.

When I was doing CGH Services the deal was simple - I had exclusive right to sell the product and paid a royalty on each sale.

Once CGH Services ceased trading the copyright reverted to the author - what they did with the program was then up to them.

Some publishers bought the copyright (or it resided in them if the author was an employee and the software was produced by the employee in work time.)
Unless stipulated in the contract the copyright would continue to belong to the publisher even when they ceased trading.

Publishers could sell on the copyright when they stopped trading to a third party if they owned it.

I don't know the circumstances of the close of Digital Precision or what happened to its assets.

I notice that Freddy Vachha is (or was) leader of UKIP in 2020, until he got ousted in some sort of internal coup.
His twitter account appears to have been suspended