Linspire. That one word sums up my whole experience. Now, while I don’t condone piracy for the sake of piracy, I would like to get it out there that (as with everything in life) it’s a nuanced thing in my opinion. Say, for instance, that you’re building a retro PC… you want those /486 vibes so bad, I know it! Anyway, let’s say you’re building a retro PC and you’re intent on getting hardware and software from circa 1992. Okay, that’s great and all, but the software? Technically (assuming I’m understanding correctly, but more on that later), it would be illegal to download a copy of MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (gotta have more than just Real-mode Networking… it’s a /486! With Netscape 2.02!), and all of the software and games that you might want to load on it for that authentic experience, even though the companies who designed and coded it are either ran by people who were born after its release or the company came down with a bog-standard case of not existing anymore. The question: why is it technically illegal to build these things when nobody gives a damn about computer code from 1992? I ask you. You’re not hurting Microsoft’s bottom line if you get the ancient software… they wouldn’t even support it if you went up to them; they’d probably make some comment about it belonging in a museum (Internet Archive, anyone?).
Honestly? They’re probably right on that one.
As a hypothetical, let’s say that I went and made some software for the Commodore 64 (Gen Xers, here-here) back in 1983 and copyrighted it. It gets sold in the stores on the exact same shelf as the C64, so popular that nobody would think about getting the C64 without getting my software (think cassette tape, diskette, or (if I could be super-efficient with the 6502/6510 machine code) a ROM cartridge). Well, by the time the internet would have came along and made its way into the hands of the general public, we would’ve already been through the C128, C128D, most of the early (and in my opinion, iconic) Commodore Amiga systems… Commodore Computer would have stopped existing, the IBM PC would become one of the two primary computer systems of the era, sporting MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows (or PC/GEOS… yes, I’m weird) and in competition with Apple’s Macintosh (outliving both the Lisa and Apple ][ platforms), and most, if not all, systems would be either 16-bit (Intel 8086/8088-80286) or 32-bit (anything after the original Macintoshes, Intel 80386 through the end of the original Pentium series). Technically, my software would still be copyrighted and not in the public domain (much to the dismay of retro computing enthusiasts, but I’m not a dick; no DRM or copy-protection). In practice, by 1998, the only people who would still use the software would be C64 enthusiasts, and that number would be incredibly tiny, compared to the original userbase during the hayday of the C64. If someone decided to download it to play around with in an emulator, make the source code public, or to make a room of their house that’s just stuck in the 80s… they wouldn’t be hurting me as a developer (actually, I’d encourage it, if I’m being completely honest here) in any real way. Sure, I’d be hurt, but only in a way that would come from looking to the past with rose-colored glasses. In practice, it would be do-or-don’t, so that brings us to the next question that explains this point:
Would it even be piracy? Sure, it would technically be copyrighted, BUT it’s not supported, sold, or maintained by the developer, the only thing anyone could get from it would be an understanding of how things used to be, and, quite frankly, I have a very strong feeling that nobody wants to go through the hassle of dealing with 5¼” floppies anymore unless they’re firmly dedicated and have the room to store everything. Even going the emulator route (clicking disk images into VICE instead of actually writing the disks in a VIC-1541 compatible format), it’s not like you would be able to make a major gain, as it’s, well, obsolete. It’s old, ancient, outdated, outmoded.
Put simply, while I believe software piracy is wrong, I also hold firm to the truth that, when someone abandons the code, it’s up for grabs. It doesn’t matter if you want to futz with someone by making them think you’ve got Mac OS 7.6.1 running on a brand-new ThinkPad T14; it doesn’t matter if you want to use that rotting corpse of a /386 to type up your articles, essays, and reports like it’s 1989; it doesn’t matter if you want to use Windows XP or 7 Pro as your server’s OS (my issues with that are completely unrelated… just trust me on that one); and it doesn’t matter if you want to make a private time capsule to the past. As long as the code has been abandoned by the original authors/developers/whathaveyou, it’s just waiting on a second shot at life. Whether that’s learning how things used to be or helping it grow up while staying true to the fact that it’s still GEOS… at the end of the day, it’s abandoned.