I would say the Icade board is more responsible for the end of the arcadeshop board than the cloned one. And seriously, how many of the cloned board sold? maybe a total of 100? How many Icade boards sell, Jammaboards clears inventory like that out in a few months, consistently.
I offered to compensate Steve, I offered to license the software, I even offered to host it, work on it and try to get things up and moving.... however there is no response.
And I don't mean to pick a fight but prOk, do you have Williams permission to recreate their artwork? Or are you filling a void that was left empty? I mean, you are taking their hard work to the pawn shop and making some money off it right? or did you license it? Plus nothing on this board is actual IP owned by AS as far as I know, does anyone have information otherwise?
What makes this so different than all the other artwork reproductions and everything else that is done? I'm actually being serious here. Someone spent money recreating this board, it is no longer available from the original source. If there was money to make here they would still be making it, just like if there was substantial money to be made for arcade art the companies would still be controlling it. But they don't, and they don't give their overt approval, they just turn their attention to something that makes them more money and let the people behind pick up the mess they left behind... Ok that's my two cents.
That being said, I am happy to work something out with Steve and would like to do something to assume some support for this, as I do think it's a valuable resource, even if the support is not profitable but is just "the right thing to do"
It's already pretty clear to me what you intend to do, but do not ever try to pretend you're doing anything morally sound. Put it out as what it is, you want money and this is a way to get it and leave it at that. This behavior is why many bigger projects don't get done, because someone else will come along and steal it to make a buck and leave the guy that did the homework and took the time to make the investment hanging. How much money is involved is not relevant if you look at it strictly as a moral discussion. There's no dollar value that defines when taking someone elses hard work is OK or not. 10 cents or 10k, it's never the right thing to do.
Really though, you talk of 'supporting' the board but how do you intend to do that? Going to add new games? updating the software? You somehow going to do something Arcadeshop wasn't? They supported the board technically just fine, but if you put out the cash and time to design the board and then someone booted it what would you do? Would you keep developing it and watch people buy the hardware elsewhere or would you just kill it? Arcadeshop never advertised their multiboard as a 8billion in one for collectors, it was created for operators and it has every game an operator likely wants so they hit their true market just fine. Whether we as collectors like the price or not, you have to understand why it was priced where it is. Arcadeshop is a company, they have overhead and they operate on typical business markups. Those markups include perceived value to the person buying it (IE: An operator). This is far more prevalent in the pinball world where the value of an item goes up based upon how much return the end user will see from the benefits of using the item. Operators are the reason the board exists and when they all stop buying and go to bootlegs to save a buck, you don't need a finance degree to know what that means. You'd not be supporting anything as you have no source code to do so, all you can do is replace stuff. You use the fact that the board is no longer available from the original source as a reason to now sell it, but you don't seem to get WHY it's no longer available and WHY it wasn't supported well for a period of time.. hopefully you can understand WHY it's not the right thing to do no?
Don't compare reproduction artwork to this situation. The bootleg boards are taking a newly created and active product from an operating business and essentially stealing it. That's a far cry from reproducing art that nobody has created in 25 years and.. To be more accurate to this scenario, you would have to think for yourself why I don't do what thisoldgame.com does and vice versa. Because it would be morally wrong of me to copy or take Rich's work without his permission and sell it. And for what it's worth, Williams is ok with reproductions, always has been and it's in writing. They've never sent a C&D to arcadeshop, phoenix arcade, thisoldgame, arcaderenovations etc. They don't seem to be interested in dealing with it at all for whatever reason, as if the company has just moved on from those days and simply doesn't care. Not to mention, they have never sold artwork for their stencilled games in their history so it's very hard to be stealing revenues from them for a business they never had. Of course, should they ever change their position on the matter I would immediately stop producing stencils as it would be their right to do so.
As for IP owned by Arcadeshop, every inch of that board is IP owned by arcadeshop. The layouts, the circuit designs, the software running, the menusys.. all of it was paid for by arcadeshop and therefore is the IP of arcadeshop. They didn't just find some board and sell it, they had it designed from the ground up.
Not trying to be mean regarding my position on the subject either, but it pains me to see the work others do to keep things alive in the hobby getting aped by others just looking to turn a buck. We probably will never see another repro part for cinematronics monitors or color vector monitors because of the same type of thing happening to the folks that put out similar time, money and creativity only to see their product being sold out from under them. I know many people see 'competition' as the best thing in the world, but in a hobby like this competition in the end usually leads to the creative forces having no choice but to leave the business while the people that got in through the back door not footing any of the development costs undercut them leading us to no competition at all AND no new products. I would say to sell all the korean stuff you can, work on a new board that's better than the arcadeshop board and just let that one go.
At some point we all need to say that's far enough, I don't want the money that bad.