I worked at Franklin and was one an early hire. Using the Apple ROM code was an explicit choice. There was no real defined API so a lot of apps called random routines in ROM or referenced arbitrary ROM data and if it wasn’t there the app broke. Franklin’s argument was that the ROM was the API and if you wanted to be compatible it had to be identical.
Court didn’t agree, probably rightfully so. But Franklin was a fun place to work. It survived for years after the court decision and pivoted to making handheld gadgets. Their electronic Bible was apparently really popular in some circles.
Honestly their argument works for me. It truly cannot be "100% compatible" without sharing the same memory layout/contents in this case.
Unfortunately for Franklin, that also meant that full compatibility comes hand and hand with trademark & copyright violations. I find it more "sad" than "upsetting" as the original author implies in this piece.
Personally, I love cloned hardware and software. I seek out clones when I can and even make my own (for fun, not profit.) I have a few Atari 2600 hardware clones I designed and built along with eprom cloning software and burning hardware. Not for any real reason, just because I like figuring out how hardware and software works and cloning is often a means to that end.
> Unfortunately for Franklin, that also meant that full compatibility comes hand and hand with trademark & copyright violations.
Franklin eventually released a couple of clones which were compatible and had a clean BIOS (the 500 and 2000). I'm not sure about full compatibility but I never encountered anything that wouldn't run on my 500. To be fair, I got the thing in the mid nineties and only ran a few programs on it...
Growing up my friend had one (a 500), I don't remember finding anything in my pile of pirated floppies that he couldn't run.
How do you design Atari 2600 clones? Do you have to replicate the TIA?
How big was the Franklin back then? My uncle worked there in the 1980s, but I was a kid and have no concept of if it was a scappy startup or a midsized company.
When it started it was a scrappy startup, a handful of people. I went there because my old boss, Dave McWherter, essentially was the engineering department. Grew slowly to maybe a hundred people. Then exploded to several times that at least. At the end there were active projects for: a portable Apple II clone, a PC clone, portable CP/M machine (think Osbourne One), MSX game machine, and probably more. Way too big way too fast.
So I have to ask, who is your uncle and where did he work in Franklin?