[Coco] VCC Status …

Sat Jul 18 00:24:45 EDT 2015

James, First, Stephen Fisher has NO idea what he is talking about. He is nothing but trouble to this list (and others). He is a "conspirousy theorist" and thinks EVERYONE is out to get him. Most on this list have put him on the "spam/ignore list" long ago. As far as I know, he has NEVER talked to the author... I have, as have others. I actually had several conversations with the author back when he was developing Vcc. Stephen is probably referring to those who actually "have" a copy of the sources as "owners", and they ARE NOT owners.

The sources were released to 3 or 4 people to "play with" until Joseph (yes, he IS the author AND owner of the copyright), and that is how the "binary only" release of Vcc 1.43b came about as two of those people added the DW4/Becker port support. Joseph asked for the sources to NOT be released until he fixed a few things and it was at that time, he quit answering emails and disappeared.

>From what Joseph told me, he wanted to fix the "tounge in cheek" copyrights (they are rather funny and even more so in the sources) and remove the Tandy roms (for copyright reasons) from the sources before they were released (understandably). It never happened. Also, I think he wanted to comment the sources a bit to make it easier for others to work with. There are very few comments at all as it is.

Since Joseph owns the copyright, it is his software and all rights pass to his family if something has happens to him, so until something is found out, the sources will most likely stay in limbo.

I have searched endlessly to find where he was from, searched obituaries and news articles. It seems "Joseph Forgione" was a popular (and common) Italian name. If he (or his family) could be contacted, and the sources released, it would be easy to do the things he wanted done before releasing it.

If it ever is released, it should be put into a repository such as the NitrOS9 repository with limited "editing" access to keep 10,000 "non-working" versions from floating around. A team should be assembled to convert it to a cross platform format and bugs fixed (yes, there are quite a few bugs).

And by the way, DW4 is almost effortless when you get it going and Vcc 1.43b is amazing when combined with Vcc. There's so much more you can do that used to take tons of hardware to do in the past.

If you have any questions on Vcc 1.43b or DW4, just send me a private email and I'll help all I can :-)

Bill Pierce
"Charlie stole the handle, and the train it won't stop going, no way to slow down!" - Ian Anderson - Jethro Tull

My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
Co-Contributor, Co-Editor for CocoPedia
http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Global Moderator for TRS-80/Tandy Color Computer Forums
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E-Mail: ooogalapasooo at aol.com

-----Original Message-----
From: James Ross <jrosslist at outlook.com>
To: coco <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Fri, Jul 17, 2015 9:39 pm
Subject: [Coco] VCC Status …

> Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2015 17:53:54 -0400
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Donkey Kong
Remixed
> CC: ooogalapasooo at aol.com (Bill Pierce)

Hi Bill, Ahh… good! You’re
the author of the page at CoCopedia describing the 1.4.3 version of VCC w/ the
DW4/Becker improvements. 

I read that page w/ a lot of interest. Especially the
4 paragraphs of the introduction. I have not been using the 1.4.3 version to
play w/ VCC because since I don’t have a real CoCo3 I thought I would put off
learning about DW4… 

Glad you chimed in here, perhaps we should change the
title of this thread to “VCC Status …” 

First of all I don’t mean to be making
a big deal over this. Let me first say, whoever has control over this software
code, has the right to do whatever they want – w/o explanations to anyone – it’s
a free country. So I apologize in advance if it seems like I am being annoying,
I hope I am not. Or demanding, I am not -- I am just curious trying to find
information. 

I get the impression that a good portion of people on this list
might use VCC from time to time, even if they have a real CoCo3 – and as a
community would benefit in knowing what the fate of VCC is. It is a very nice
emulator. I would think everyone would like to see it maintained and improved
on. 

> James, the original author of Vcc WAS going to release it open source
but disappeared before doing so. 

When you hit Help | About in VCC it shows
“Copyright 2010 by Joseph Forgione”

So Joseph Forgione is who we are talking
about? He is the one that can NOT be contacted?

Is he the original owner and
author, or just the original owner of the Copyright? 

Because according to
Stephen H. Fischer, in another thread recently on this list, the owner and
author are not the same person. And according to him the owner is looking for
somebody to work on it. (But apparently the owner does not want to open source
it?). And the owner is actually contactable since Stephen says – “I have yet to
even consider telling the "OWNER"” -- so apparently also the owner does not want
to be known?  Why the secrecy as to whom the owner is, if it’s not the person
whose name is on the Copyright? That whole notion seems mysterious and
strange.

So is Stephen right, or wrong about this? 

> Several of us were in
contact with him when he stated this and he had implied he was going to release
it in the next month or two... and never did. It's feared his health turned for
the worse and that's why he disappeared.

That is very SAD to hear. We would all
hope the best to him and if he is still with us, wish him well. 

Did the author
of the 1.4.3 improvements receive the code directly from Joseph Forgione? And
still has a copy of the code w/ the 1.4.3 improvements?  Does that person agree
w/ Stephen? What is the view of that person about releasing the software? 

Who
was the person(s) that last had contact w/ Joseph Forgione and is a copy of that
email still available?  That’s all that would be needed to legally cover a
person if they were to go ahead and release it under a GPL v3 License … just add
the explanation in a readme (w/ a copy of those communications, explained and
spelled out) and put the 2010 Copyright of Joseph Forgione on all the source
files + any author contributions copyrights + the GPL notice below that. 

In my
opinion there is NO difference in releasing the BINARY like it is being released
now, and not the source when it comes to breaking the Copyright on it.
 Especially if we are talking about an conscience thing. 

The idea there is a
legal owner out there that does not want to make their intentions known about
this software – i.e. Is it commercial? Is it freeware? What is it??? No official
Website on it? That seems strange to me. 

Bill, or anyone else, that want to
chime in here – I would venture to guess I am not the only one who is curious
about this.  I think others on this list would be too.  If this gets us nowhere,
then I will not pursue this anymore.  

> The original source is written in
Microsoft Visual C++ (win95) and DirectX 8. To convert it to any form of modern
programming language would be a feat in itself, but could probably be done by
someone with knowledge of such conversions.

> On the other hand, there are
several open source 6809 CPU emulations around and if you look, I'm pretty sure
you can find enough on the GIME to emulate it (JV, VCC and Mess did).

> The
problem is that no one with that kind of programming knowledge seems to be
interested in writting a cross-platform Coco 3 (or Coco 2) emulator.

> Probably
the best bet is to get on the "Mess Dev Team" and fix the very buggy Coco
emulations there which CAN be compiled for most platforms. Every release seems
to introduce a new bug.

I will comment on MESS and some other ideas later Bill
... 

Thanks, James

> Bill Pierce

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