Since many abandonware sites run on ads, in many countries (including Germany) they are treated as "commercial", even if they don't actually sell the games. I doubt though that the income from the ads even covers the server and maintenance costs...

Sorry bout that. Will try and stay on schedule...
That may be so but GOG still stands for the obvious.

Paprika !!!

Oh it definitely would be but nobody obviously cares so why should you? Some companies are just sitting on games not being sold anywhere and that (at least for me) is simply not reason enough to prevent me from playing them. If they want my money, all they have to do is make it actually available for purchase. Roughly 1/4 of the games I own on GOG are games I have previously finished/played and bought only once I started using GOG as my main purchase platform.

Also true of course. As long as nobody is suing you there is probably no reason to be afraid and it is not as if you are hurting anybody.

Abandonware is not a legal term at all, downloading "abandonware" is still piracy, its just the chances the copyright holders actually doing something to protect their IP is pretty slim. But if a store like GoG were to start selling "abandonware" then GoG would be selling pirated software, and at that point the copyright holders just might take even bigger notice and actually want to sue/prosecute GoG for doing such things.

No, piracy is actually robbing and raping at sea, by force of arms. Copying data nobody seems to care about might be illegal, but it is not piracy.

Piracy, as in Software Piracy. You must be new to software, but downloading/selling software that you do not have a license to do so is called sofware piracy.

I develop software since 1988, so yeah, I must be pretty new to it...

What you believe or don't is of little concern to me...

Yeah, it's a word that was invented to bring the illegal copying of data mentally near really violent crime - by the rights holders. The "pirates" themselves picked it up for the notion of "freedom" which oozes from the old Hollywood buccaneer movies... In reality piracy was and is a pretty violent and desperate business, and most people didn't do it "for fun".

I know it's a common term, but I think sometimes things should be put in perspective. And in case of abandonware it's like calling picking up a coin from the pedwalk stealing.

Also, home-taping killed music, no?

That explains why Weird Al never released an album after the 80s, or why Firebird went out of business during the heyday of the C64.

Probably Jim Morrison also killed himself over it...

I guess the correct legal term would be more like "copyright breach".

But to be fair, Germany did not do any better by developing and using the term "Raubkopie" (Raub = stealing / Kopie = copy). Of course those are all symantics and everybody knows what's what - especially the judge in the end.

I guess for those they cannot track down, start selling and let them come to you. That would speed up the process!