Wow, that's a HUGE post

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- first actions of Bazix are not really positive, creative, even if they have good reasons about respect of copyrights

From what I've seen I'd agree, allthough there might've been good reasons for it that we don't know. ...and I guess they're the first PUBLICLY KNOWN actions. More might be going on behind the scenes.

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as the 3 members of Bazix are also MRC members, it's not a good situation: how can the same people have a business attitude and a hobby attitude ? and how can the MSX community knows if their reactions are personal or the MRC point of view or the Bazix point of view ?

I think its possible, if the business is kind of a hobby. One might run into dilemma's though.
It's maybe a strange comparison, but I've been admin at an emulation site, and it was near-impossible to have a "perfect" set of forum rules. There's always a catch (hey, if you do this, then why not that?); while on one hand the reaction of users was sometimes understandable, on the other hand it had its frustrating moments.

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as first actions of Bazix are not positive, it has a bad impact on MRC : if the people feel that Bazix imposes his views to MRC, then it's really bad for MRC.

I think Sander van Nunen covered that part quite well.

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MRC is a great site for the news, the discussions, the impulse to the creativity and the development of new software or hardware ; articles like the emulators comparisons or pictures about MSX fairs are really very positive things

^_^ Ok, I admit it. It's very good to hear this every now and then...

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there was no big problem before the creation of Bazix

Although Bazix first announced their activities in October 2004, the company has been around since July 2004 and the first steps that got us to starting Bazix were made much, much earlier. As a matter of fact: during my trip to Japan in 2003 a first agreement with Mr. Nishi was already made. You can see a picture of us shaking hands, closing the deal, right here. So, I personally think that you knowing about Bazix has mainly changed the way you look at MRC, instead of MRC actually changing.

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as the 3 members of Bazix are also MRC members, it's not a good situation: how can the same people have a business attitude and a hobby attitude ?

Bazix would not be the first company built on a hobby attitude and a feeling of 'moral responsibilities'

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You do forget, however, that initially the translated software DOES work on a real MSX and as we have stated before, never say never.

That is kind of the problem - it *might*. There were a lot of games translated for MSX, and now all of a sudden they have been ‘recalled’, will in the future be used for paid emulator versions (note that for many of them, I have already paid) which are useless for MSX-ers preferring the real thing, and only vague ‘might’s and ‘never say never’s with respect to something we could actually use.

So I think it is not strange that there are MSX users which do not see the huge upside in all this. What if it might not, then from now on many translated games will only be available in an MSX-Player (not even my emulator of choice) package? For us, there are no guarantees whatsoever. Of course, you cannot give those, I understand, but...


~Grauw

(Rieks, I appreciate the extensive reply on this topic, btw )

@Grauw:

The only guarantee we can give you is that we would -REALLY LIKE- to do a lot more than just releasing games for MSXPLAYer. As stated in my long reply, this is our starting point, though.

To elaborate more, probably every community MSX user already owns game translations that were previously released. They are not harmed if certain translations are removed from the internet. WOOMB translations hadn't been there in the first place if WOOMB hadn't been there. As for me, WOOMB works very motivating when it comes to translating games. I (at least) -HOPE- my audience will be much and much larger this way and people from the community can play the games as well if they WISH. If they don't like the fact that they have to do with the emulator part as well, they can also refrain from buying. In that case, to that person, everything remains at it was before Bazix and WOOMB were established

I have one concern here though. I just read rikusu's post, and there's one thing that occured to me while reading it; judging the post, I see many good intentions; however, aren't you afraid that this whole revival thing might have more negative impact than positive (despite it being good intentions)? I'm not saying that it will, but that there could be the possibility; Apparantly some things have to be sacrificed in favor of others; I think that could play a role, and also how the MSX community will react on it. However, here's the ill-informed speaking, perhaps it's just giving one loaf of bread and receiving a life-time supply in return; I certainly hope so

On the more positive side; it's great that the games will include extra's like manuals/artwork. That's the stuff people want.

Rikusu: I wouldn’t go as far as to say it would be the same as it was before... Because previously you were releasing translations for MSX natively, and if the intended but highly uncertain release of MSX versions doesn’t work out, and those previous releases have also been withdrawn and thus cannot be acquired anymore... There’s definitely something lost!

Oh, yes, and I absolutely refuse to play games on an emulator. I don’t have an MSX for nothing, and on an emulator it’s just not the same, might as well go play on my Playstation then. So I guess it *is* my loss then, because refraining from buying as you so nicely call it (lame!) means that I will basically be denied to play the game. On my MSX. As it’s supposed to.

Also, I basically do not see how an .EXE file would offer more protection against copying (because I think that is the concern?) than a disk. Why the hell is there an objection against releasing native MSX versions as well? Sounds to me like ‘they’ just wanna sell copies of MSX-Player (at the cost of ‘real’ MSX-ers), to be honest.


~Grauw

p.s. I understand that of course you guys ‘would really like’. It’s just that I have my doubts as to whether it will really happen... Because, (again ;p) W00mb is nice, but useless to me (and many others in the MSX community).

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The problem is the following : - MRC is a great site for the news, the discussions, the impulse to the creativity and the development of new software or hardware ; articles like the emulators comparisons or pictures about MSX fairs are really very positive things

Agreed.

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- there was no big problem before the creation of Bazix

There still isn't if you ask me.

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- first actions of Bazix are not really positive, creative, even if they have good reasons about respect of copyrights

The first action I noticed was them signing our titles, you won't hear me complain But I agree the latest action is probably not seen as very positive, then again, most people that freak out now have a "Corporate == Evil" stamp on their forehead and honestly feel everything should be free, without any rights reserved and open-source. At least that is the impression I sometimes get, some might call that noble, I call it naive and ignorant, the world doesn't work that way, and it would be disastrous if it would.

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- as the 3 members of Bazix are also MRC members, it's not a good situation: how can the same people have a business attitude and a hobby attitude ?

Not a big deal, I do it all the time, since it doesn't have to interfere. I don't see that problem with Bazix members either. Sure some part of their attitude might have changed now, so did my attitude towards illegal games change when I went pro. My hobby never suffered because of that.

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and how can the MSX community knows if their reactions are personal or the MRC point of view or the Bazix point of view ?

Well, I would suggest to Snout, Bart and Rikusu to never speak as Bazix on MRC. This is a website for the scene, not for the companies. Bazix is a company, Snout, Rikusu and Bart are here as MSX fans, not because of corporate interest. I would have said that if you wanted to get a reply from either one of them speaking for Bazix, mail info@bazix.nl and don't ask here. Guess it's too late now. I never speak for Engine Software here, I only speak as me.

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- as first actions of Bazix are not positive, it has a bad impact on MRC : if the people feel that Bazix imposes his views to MRC, then it's really bad for MRC.

If people can't keep corporate-Snout and hobby-Snout apart, or hold corporate actions against people personally, it might be a problem. Not really something the MRC nor Bazix can do something about. Seperate things they are, business and private.

manager: "my wife would kill me if I did that"
former employee "- I didn't know you had a wife! "
manager: "and my wife doesn't know I have a job, I keep my business and personal life strictly seperate"

(c) Matt Groenig & David X. Cohen

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As long as we don’t have the three elements I mentioned above, we cannot do this. But I can tell you however, that we are aiming to put as much extra material as possible in the package that is sold. Translated documents belonging by games, original covers, posters, you name it and as long as it is something that is obtainable to us, we will put it in . In fact, the first authentic manual translation has just been finished tonight

I do still have the DASS Book and Super-Arranged musictape

cheezz... I only been out of this post for a day and a lot of new posts have come up since then..

but this remark chatches my eye...

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based on true facts: 3/4 or 75% of all running software in the world is illigal so that means only 25% uses legal software

so does this certify for you to use illegal software? Fuck off... cheez...

no its almost normal

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Bazix I would like to have a list of software you claim to have the copyrights of. And ontop of that I would like to see where you base the fact on that YOU have the copyrights... also why is it illegal software? If you will give me proof of these 2 things I will remove all software from this computer which you claim to have the copyright over.

I could write this in an e-mail to bazix... cause I have no clue... I can call myself the owner of the copyrights to microsoft products... but with not proof to back it up it would actually look pretty silly.

As a protest I've downloaded the Sega Master System rom of Golvellius and am playing that one with the IPS patch for a translation

So finaly we're ready to RNFF !
That's neat

Lemme be the first one:

/me RNFF!

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But I agree the latest action is probably not seen as very positive, then again, most people that freak out now have a "Corporate == Evil" stamp on their forehead and honestly feel everything should be free, without any rights reserved and open-source. At least that is the impression I sometimes get, some might call that noble, I call it naive and ignorant, the world doesn't work that way, and it would be disastrous if it would.

Open source is built on copyright, just like proprietary software is. The difference is that with open source, the authors grant many more rights to the users than with proprietary software.

I agree that copyrights are a good thing (although a 20 year term would be enough, in my opinion). But I think that if copyright owners give their users some more rights than seems to be the norm nowadays, it will be better for both the copyright owners and the users.

The music industry tried to shove their vision of the music market down the throat of its customers. It didn't work. Then Apple came and offered cheap and easy downloads of music and sold millions of songs. For me, iTunes is still too restrictive, but for many people the restrictions are acceptable.

About calling it noble: if you spend your own time writing software and allow the world to share it, that is noble in my opinion. If you just take something that someone else made and proclaim it should be free, there is nothing noble about it.

I'm participating in projects like openMSX and C-BIOS to create a free MSX ecosystem. Free in the sense of freedom: not paying to download it is only a small part of it. I think it would be a shame if the commercial MSX ecosystem that Bazix is trying to create would be completely separate from the free MSX ecosystem. However, if they insist on restricting their software to MSXPLAYer instead of choosing widely accepted standards such as ROM and DSK images, they are creating an artificial boundary between the two ecosystems.

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I think we should introduce a new internet abbreviation: RNFF. After LOL, ROFL, ROFLMAO etc. etc. etc. we now have RNFF: Running Naked in Fields of Flowers. Supposedly, members of the MSX community do so to celebrate the fact that they can live in peace ^_^.

The winter edition being RNFFFMAO
[edit] Actually, there are no F's in the winter. Make that RNFSFMAO [/edit]