Here are the wanted clarification:
> Does this mean that the ROM image(s) will be available too to HP42S owners ?
No, the won't because of copyright reasons. ROM images are definitely _not_ part of the distribution. I personally also will not make any 'proof-of-ownership' verification.
The only way is to extract the ROM image from your own calculator. You will find a tutorial for this at http://privat.swol.de/ChristophGiesselink/Emu28/CPROMUPL.ZIP.
Is the use of your own ROM images in emulators legally? A hard question that can only be answered a lawyer. But in the times of Emu48 before the ROM images were published, employees of HP stated in postings that HP have had no problems with the use of ROM images created from own calculators. But this will imply also, when you sell the calculator you have to destroy all copies (ROM images) of this ROM.
> Does this mean that the emulator's author will be amenable to give some kind of support to users,
There's no personal support! I will not answer any support questions by email. Answering questions in newsgroups (or usenet) have the advantage that the answer might be interesting for others, the support can be made be several people who had the same problem and finally stupid questions can be ignored.
I personally have no problems with mails pointing to a bug or misbehavior of the software, but I also don't like something like this "Could you add this and this and perhaps this?" I more prefer something like this: "Hey, I made my own copy of ... and added the following feature yyy. This might be useful for others. What do you think about integrating it into your version?"
> and release updates and maintenance versions from time to time, or else the funds cover just the release of the sources and that's all there's to it ?
Updates will be done in the same manner like with Emu28 or Emu48. It's on Open Source project, updates can be made by everyone, but of course I will fix bugs and update the software from time to time.
What will be published? The following list may change in minor parts.
- Emu42 (Win32 version) binary + sources
- Emu42 (Pocket PC 2002 version for ARM CPU) binary + sources
- Emu48 (Pocket PC 2002 version for ARM CPU) binary + sources
- Emu42 (Win32 version) KML scripts for HP17B, HP17BII, HP27S, HP28S, HP42S
- Emu42 (Pocket PC version) KML scripts (which one will depend on Erik Ehrling)
What will _not_ be published?
- ROM images
- Emu48 Pocket PC KML files, existing Emu48CE files must be patched by the user
Best Regards
Christoph Giesselink