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Reality is if there is sufficient interest in Mister/X16 people will just pirate the Rom images as they do on many of the others.
That is an interesting point. I don't expect to see true clones (that is, clones of the entire machine, including its ports and extraneous features, that aren't general FPGA solutions that can easily replicate other systems as well, such as MiSTer) of the X16 for quite a while. Probably not until David and company are no longer making it, and even then, only if it's successful. If someone does make a clone right when the system is new, I can imagine there being significant backlash against someone trying to compete with a niche product which is mostly a labour of love.
For the MiSTer issue though, while it will always be
possible to simply use the original ROMs, I can definitely see a core author going to the trouble to try to make an unencumbered ROM using the Open ROMs code combined with the BSD-licensed code from the official ROM, for the simple reason that having such a ROM
available and made the default heavily legitimizes the whole thing and takes a load off of David's mind.The MiSTer community is a fairly nice oone, and I can imagine people caring about that kind of thing. If I were the one writing an X16 core for the MiSTer, I know that I would try to do that for that reason.
I think having unofficial X16 things (mostly FPGA cores, as opposed to full-board clones, which I don't expect to see for a very long time) try to play by the rules as much as possible does a lot to avoid conflict in the community and avoid splintering or hard feelings.