[Cthulhu_]

That's what it looks like. I kind of get it, as there's no guarantee that a game they make available again will sell enough to cover the costs - it's as much a preservation effort as a commercial one.

For a lot of games it's just a matter of configuring dosbox and packaging it, I can't see how that would be very expensive. But for others it's a lot more involved.

[xnorswap]

If this were a real preservation effort, they could set up a charitable foundation for computer game preservation, and encourage donations to that.

[freehorse]

But either case we talk about commercial products. The games are still copyrighted commodities to be sold. I assume they get licensed by the copyright holders to update them and sell them in gog. I do not see how a "charity"-based process would make sense or be honest here.

[vanderZwan]

What are you talking about? Charities can sell products, they're just not supposed to make a profit, so all profits would have to go back into preservation.

I mean we can go off on a tangent about why IKEA should not get away with being registered as a charity, but as long as GoG is not doing tax evasion I don't see the problem.

[freehorse]

The copyright holders still make profit from the sales as for-profit entities. I do agree that non-profit status would make more sense for the preservation program though. But it still would not mean that nobody makes profit out of the result.