What you are paying for is not as much the emulator, as the library of legal rom's. Is it the only legal way of getting Amiga roms now? unless you have an Amiga and can dump it to disk yourself.

I wouldn't mind paying a small fee for the legit Kickstarter roms. But not THAT much.

And I see Amiga Forever as the main reason why there are no sites that sell legitimate Amiga games, like GOG does.

The emulator itself is FREE. Look up WinUAE.
IIRC, Value edition comes with Kickstart 1.3, that gets you Amiga 500 and Amiga 1000/2000 functions. No AGA (fancy 256 color graphics) or CD32 support.

Right, okay now I get it. So if I just use WinUAE, I still have to find some way to get my hands on the Kickstart roms that can emulate the various AmigaOSes?

Yes. And the only legit some ways are buying Amiga Forever or buying Amigas and dumping their ROMs.

Ah cool thanks a lot man. So, the best version if I can provide my own games would be Amiga Forever Plus?

Yeah. That should have all the system ROMs. As for providing games, AF links to a number of those "providing" sites. BTW, the games Cloanto packages with their stuff are mostly cracked scene releases. Their basic C64 Forever is essentially a free bundle of WinVICE emulator with a bunch of cracked games.

And they can get away with it legally? Damn, that's cunning business thinking.

Oh, yeah.

P.S. Once you get Amiga running, check out this obscure title http://www.sadisticbutchering.com/legacy/
Postal? Bah!

I do think they got the rights to distribute these titles - but didn't get a publisher provided copy of each one. There is a number of recently made freeware titles in the collection too.

Likewise, for each game they hosts, the website back2roots asked the publisher the right to freely distribute it (the games aren't public domain, just freely available one this website only), but a lot of disk images are cracked games.

In these two cases, having publisher approval doesn't mean having publisher help...

It's a legal distribution of games with the protection already removed by a crack.

I also have a copy of both the Deluxe edition of Amiga Forever (updated to 2011 version) and C64 Forever. Love 'em both. I will add the caveat that, as I understand it, WinUAE alone will do much of what Amiga Forever can do (but you'd still need to supply the workbench files).

I very much like the packages!

Somewhat uninformative regarding the games it actually comes with. I'd like a list, or at least some of the highlights. But they're being very cagey for a company that seems to be expecting me to part with my money.

As to whether this bodes well for GOG, it all depends on whether they have any business sense or not.

They got permissions for free distribution of Infocom and Sierra classics?

I was wondering about that before. To some extent, it is possible. The site is very old by Internet standards and started in easier times. If they approached a right person at a right time and ask a right question they could actually get a legal permission then. Now their request would be stuck forever at the bottom of the pile in legal department.
Another possibility is worse -- they just seek a permission from someone who had some relationship with the company at that time. In the legal sense it is on a very shaky ground, pretty much does not mean anything. I am pretty sure if you ask Al Lowe if you can distribute LSL games on your site the answer will be either "yes and I insist you do," but does not make it anymore legal.