WinUAE pricing

[Michael Doma]

Dear Toni,

if WinUAE was a commercial product, how much would you charge for it to reflect the work you've put into, as well as the demand?

I'm asking on behalf of anyone who wants to make a reasonable donation, including myself.
( And let's not forget the possibility that you are so rich already that you don't need any more donations )

Regards,

Michael

[chip]

WinUAE is great because it's free IMHO

[Mclane]

I would hope that Toni gets a moderate amount from Cloanto, as without Toni's hard work they would have no product bar the roms etc. Also take into account that some emu authors (not going to name them) will not accept payments as it puts more pressure on them to produce faster and offer loads more support.

I personally have no clue re Toni's money management, as it's 100% none of my business.

Would I like for Toni to accept some stuff, yes, but it's up to him..

PS, some countries have strange TAX related laws re 'additional income'...No one needs that mess...

[derSammler]

I would never pay for an emulator (if it was a commercial product). Emulators serve a big role in documenting hardware and providing a way to run obsolete software, and because of that, they should be open source and free.

As for a donation, I don't see how that would depend on a possible price. You donate whatever you think is "right".

[jotd]

25 years that Toni is doing it almost alone. This is huge and should at least be worth 20% of the benefits that Cloanto does.

I'm afraid that's closest of 0%. But we can support Toni with donations.

[Mclane]

That is shocking JOTD, you can see why emu authors either walk away or burn out.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Michael Doma

I'm asking on behalf of anyone who wants to make a reasonable donation, including myself.

I'd say just donate as much as you reasonably can considering your current financial situation.
And if you have too much money, there are solutions to fix this.

[muchacha_grande]

I think that emulator authors are motivated by the same reasons that emulator users.

[ma693541]

I wrote for some years ago on EAB that Cloanto used illegal copies of games in their Amiga Forever Package, after some back and forth, Cloanto claimed that they have got legal rights to use the games in the Amiga Forever package, the man behind Cloanto and the Amiga Forever Package even asked me how to remove the cracks in the games when I asked why there was cracked games in the Amiga Forever Package. Cloanto have even up-to-day cracked games in AF and do not use the original games, looks like they have never heard or bothered to search and get the original games as .ipfs if they can prove that they hold the legal rights to use the included cracked games in AF. IPFs are mostly untampered games with their copy-protection intact. I suppose that Cloanto will hunt me down again and bombard me with a lot of e-mails as last time. Toni Wilen and his WinUAE rocks, dont forget that folks.

[midimax]

In what strange direction is this thread drifting?

(Some) Publisher sell their "classic" PC games cracked on Steam, guess what ... totally fine, other than that some of the cracks not fully work, nothing directly illegal there (nor here)..

*sarcasm on* other than that they for sure not own the copyright of the crack itself *sarcasm off*

[copse]

WinUAE releases are signed by Cloanto.

How'd the donation go Michael? You and your friend donated already?

[Mclane]

Unless someone enforces copyright then Cloanto will keep doing it. The chances of someone doing that these days are very slim considering the games age (I presume they are old old games?)

[pixie]

If you have the game licensed, the fact that it uses a cracked version is rather moot imo

[Mclane]

It is, but in reality it ends up with the author / owner getting a cease and desist, fighting about lost income will cost more than you would get back and almost impossible to prove amounts.

Of course it's all wrong, but the only winners are the solicitors..

[midimax]

Then again, suggesting Cloanto should include IPF (support) instead
If they have the rights they clearly can, right? But they for sure never heard of.
*facepalm*
No, they simply can't include IPF because that would indeed be illegal. And without that have fun with the copy protected version.
ma693541 for sure never read the IPF licence agreement, hell even reading the official IPF download page would be enough to know to integrate/ship that UAE plug-in with a commercial product is not allowed.

[Michael Doma]

Originally Posted by copse

How'd the donation go Michael? You and your friend donated already?

How much?
Still waiting for Toni to reply...

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Michael Doma

Still waiting for Toni to reply...

Toni will never reply. If you want to donate just do it.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by TCD

Toni will never reply. If you want to donate just do it.

Well said.

These days the way to go about these things seems to have a Patreon or a similar thingy set up - with some people (think top MiSTer devs, Yuzu, etc) making quite decent regular income this way.

As a dinosaur I do prefer the old school donation or totally free style, and have massive respect for people like Mr. Wilen who spent countless hours improving their soft, but I'm not saying the monetization model is wrong - who knows, maybe I'd do the same if I could.

[roondar]

Yup, if you want to donate, consider what you personally think it's worth to you and send him a donation

[Mclane]

Please don't drag Toni's name in to this, he never has asked for money donations and probably never will. As seen, if you have some doc's, hardware or rom dumps that he could use for improving WinUAE, then contact him. But please, can he be kept out of this. Common sense say Toni will not comment on what agreement he has with Cloanto and why should he, it's NOTHING to do with us.

As said, if you have the materials mentioned above then give him a shout, want to donate, then that's between you and Toni. If you don't like how Cloanto work then tell THEM, this forum is for WinUAE support, lets not turn it into a mud slinging sh*t storm...

Peace...

Paul..