TI bans community calculator emulation

[Keoni29]

They CAN sue the creator of the emulator, right?

[TravisE]

There's nothing wrong with an emulator, if it doesn't include any code it doesn't have a license to include. It just mimics a particular set of hardware. You could write your own code for the emulator and run just that. Copyright law has nothing to do there.

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't really see how they could ban an emulator skin that someone created themselves and allowed everyone a license to use it. It's just a picture of the calculator. It'd be pretty ridiculous if the makers of any product could stop you from taking a picture just because it had that product in the background somewhere.

[Keoni29]

But what if I was to port the hardware to an fpga.

[Juju]

Well, that sucks.

Actually, under that rule, the emulators are perfectly legal, but their utilisation with TI's ROMs aren't. So I guess someone could always create a TI-OS-compatible OS, like what they did with ReactOS.

Anyway, you still should be safe as this rule probably isn't even legal (something about backup copies or something, plus some law about criminalizing stuff retroactively), and they have absolutely no way to enforce that rule (unless they add some mechanism that detects an emulator in the boot2, but I'm pretty sure that can easily be circumvented). So, I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure the worst it would do is to void your probably already inexistant warranty.

[Adriweb]

the emulators are perfectly legal, but their utilisation with TI's ROMs aren't.

I believe it's exactly that.

Kinda the same thing with the torrent/p2p programs, whiel it's perfectly legal, 99.9% of their use go against copyright laws, but that's actually up to the users. Here, the emus are perfectly legal, and they actually happen to be z80 but optimized on the ti-calculators side, kind of.
I guess then it'd be only legal to put OSes like PongOS on them for example.

The blurry implîcations of this stipulation is whether it's retro-active for whatever was done before this rule happened. I can't think how that would be so, though. SO I guess we have nothing to fear, really, at least for anything done before this license got updated....

We acn only wait&see or what could happen. Maybe some big news during the T3 abuot all that, actually ?

[Keoni29]

The OS is a free download from TI. They made it but how can they tell us what to do with it and what not? Another (silly) example: If there is a calculator image for download (.8xp) from the TI website and I would like to set it as my wallpaper, but they told that it is forbidden to do that (don't ask why) how can they tell me not to do that?

[Ranman]

Is this really a new addition to TI's legal agreement? I could have sworn I read that same line like 8 years ago when I downloaded an OS for my TI-89.

[AngelFish]

The OS is a free download from TI. They made it but how can they tell us what to do with it and what not? Another (silly) example: If there is a calculator image for download (.8xp) from the TI website and I would like to set it as my wallpaper, but they told that it is forbidden to do that (don't ask why) how can they tell me not to do that?

Legally, you are only allowed to use the software if you follow the license restrictions. In actuality, I doubt they'll be able to enforce this restriction since it only applies to USERS and not emulator authors.

[Keoni29]

edit: **

Let's run the OS on another emulator. If it's not a TI calculator emulator it's legal

[Builderboy]

Cool story TI, I'm going to go boot up wabbit now...

[Keoni29]

Place this in your signature

[Darl181]

TI never ceases to amaze me with this stuff..

[critor]

Is this really a new addition to TI's legal agreement? I could have sworn I read that same line like 8 years ago when I downloaded an OS for my TI-89.

Here is a part of the old french TI-App Software EULA from last year:

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS ACCORD DE LICENCE DE LOGICIEL D'APPLICATION (APP)

En téléchargeant le logiciel et/ou la documentation, vous vous engagez à respecter les dispositions suivantes.

Licence : Sous réserve du paiement de tous les frais applicables, Texas Instruments Incorporated ("TI") vous concède une licence personnelle pour copier et utiliser le(s) programme(s) logiciel(s) et la documentation afférente à partir de la page Web associée ou du CD-ROM ("Matériaux sous licence"). Outre la copie du logiciel installée sur votre calculatrice, vous êtes également autorisé à en conserver un autre exemplaire sur votre ordinateur à des fins de sauvegarde et/ou d'archivage.

Restrictions : Vous ne pouvez en aucun cas désassembler ou compiler en sens inverse la partie du programme logiciel des Matériaux sous licence qui sont fournis en format code objet.. Vous ne pouvez en aucun cas vendre, louer ou louer à crédit-bail des copies des Matériaux sous licence.
[...]

No mention of emulators.
Full EULA readable here: http://www.univers-ti-nspire.com/forum/6-questions-sur-ti-nspire/2874-ti-nspire-basique-ou-ti-89-titanium?limit=10&start=30

And here is the new french EULA:



So yes, it's new. Not sure if they changed this last week, last month or last year, but they did change this recently.

[blue_bear_94]

From what I read, TI is only preventing us from running their applications on a non-TI emulator. Whether or not that includes the OS, non-TI calculator emulators are technically still legal, right?
However, the new clause is making everything hard for use, but TI doesn't care. In fact, maybe it doesn't want us to program on them. Another alternative theory is that it might be mistaken on how the online emulators work. You need your OWN ROM image, from your OWN calculator.

[flyingfisch]

how typical of good ole TI