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Kryoflux was the state of the art in 2013 (and is pretty capable for non C64 disks) but their shady legal practices asserting copyright of ripped images[1] make

Kryoflux was the state of the art in 2013 (and is pretty capable for non C64 disks) but their shady legal practices asserting copyright of ripped images[1] makes their images blacklisted by the Internet Archive. In 2019 a lot of people migrated to FluxEngine [2]. Though there are plenty of alternatives [3]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/buyj9f/comment/epjwsut https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/buyj9f/co... [2] http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/index.html http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/index.html [3] https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Rescuing_Floppy_Disks https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Rescuing_Floppy_...

amelius 6y ago
> asserting copyright of ripped images I don't think there would be a legal basis here. If I sell a pen, I can't claim ownership of the things people write with it, no matter what EULA I make people sign. The same holds for a Xerox machine. And similarly it holds for a tool to copy bits or flux transitions.
- paulgerhardt 6y ago
  Not quite. As I understand it, the hardware rips disks and encodes them in proprietary SPS flux image formats (.IPF, .STREAM, and .DRAFT) subject to a very weird license agreement.[1] SPS does not assert ownership of the encoded content but does assert that content encoded with their software can not be used for commercial purposes. I suspect this “bit coloring” is at the root of why the Internet Archive made the decision to no longer accept Kryoflux based images and why it is not a good candidate for archival purposes. [1] https://www.kryoflux.com/download/LICENCE.txt https://www.kryoflux.com/download/LICENCE.txt
  - snvzz 6y ago
    It's a shame they're doing this. But at least, there is hope that fully OSS+OSHW solutions will effectively replace it. What they're doing is certainly not magic. Warpers existed in the 90s already.
    - grouber 6y ago
      I suspect that will happen eventually too. Think this is quite different to a warper analogue copy though
- Brian_K_White 6y ago
  It doesn't matter if it's legally enforceable. All that matters is that they tried.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
grouber 6y ago
From what I can tell, very little of that is true. This anti-KryoFlux sentiment seems to come from one or two high profile people disliking the way the KryoFlux people do stuff. They are a company and it's not open source. I get it. Sounds like it's down mainly to bad PR more than anything. Misinformation from some quarters is just not helpful, and reflects badly on them IMO.

amelius 6y ago

> asserting copyright of ripped images I don't think there would be a legal basis here. If I sell a pen, I can't claim ownership of the things people write with it, no matter what EULA I make people sign. The same holds for a Xerox machine. And similarly it holds for a tool to copy bits or flux transitions.

paulgerhardt 6y ago
Not quite. As I understand it, the hardware rips disks and encodes them in proprietary SPS flux image formats (.IPF, .STREAM, and .DRAFT) subject to a very weird license agreement.[1] SPS does not assert ownership of the encoded content but does assert that content encoded with their software can not be used for commercial purposes. I suspect this “bit coloring” is at the root of why the Internet Archive made the decision to no longer accept Kryoflux based images and why it is not a good candidate for archival purposes. [1] https://www.kryoflux.com/download/LICENCE.txt https://www.kryoflux.com/download/LICENCE.txt
- snvzz 6y ago
  It's a shame they're doing this. But at least, there is hope that fully OSS+OSHW solutions will effectively replace it. What they're doing is certainly not magic. Warpers existed in the 90s already.
  - grouber 6y ago
    I suspect that will happen eventually too. Think this is quite different to a warper analogue copy though
Brian_K_White 6y ago
It doesn't matter if it's legally enforceable. All that matters is that they tried.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

grouber 6y ago

From what I can tell, very little of that is true. This anti-KryoFlux sentiment seems to come from one or two high profile people disliking the way the KryoFlux people do stuff. They are a company and it's not open source. I get it. Sounds like it's down mainly to bad PR more than anything. Misinformation from some quarters is just not helpful, and reflects badly on them IMO.