Gamersgate and DotEmu also distribute the Sega Mega Drive packs. In fact, I believe GOG is the only major distributor that isn't selling them.

I do know that a Clean-room emulation is legally possible (see DOSBox), but I wasn't aware that there were viable clean-rooms emulators out there. Thank you for telling me that they exist :)

No dude. I explained it politely and clearly. You mistakenly perceived it as rude.

Learn to respect a person's explanation and don't bandy false accusations around. I don't appreciate it.

But I do appreciate you explaining the use of emulators. Very useful info and I signed the petition. Thanks.

yes, but also that each single SMD game SEGA sells it packed with the emulator. SEGA can do this easily as they are the distributors / owners of the game, the OS, and the proprietary emulator software (and there really is no reason why it is not on Gog yet...)

PS is a different kettle of fish, there is no proprietary emulator, and all the exiting ones are in a very legal grey area, and Sony often do not have the rights to the game so any deals must be done with each rights owner. Making one would cost Sony some development and research time + money, which they might not feel is worth doing.

If there for some reason becomes available a third party legal emulator, then it becomes a matter of costs and how it is handled. Do each game come with the emulator? This will drive up the cost, as there will be additional costs for each game sold. Should you need to buy the emulator and then the games separately? this will keep the cost of the actual games down, but then they will no longer be able to play out of the box, with all the problems goG will get steaming out from this.

Lastly, can not the game "just be ported by Gog?", no, not really. Even if it was technically possible to port the games, you will need access to source codes and the rights to alter them. AFAIK GoG do not have access to any source codes of any games they sell, and they do not have the rights to alter any game they sell either (except maybe the Witcher games, not sure how legalities are handled with CDRed...), so goG can not do anything at all with the original code. This then need to be handled by rights owners (Acquire I think it is), so if you want a port to PC which GOG can distribute, you would need to plea with them.

wall of text... TL:DR, it is not as easy as it might seem....

No you don't. GOG releases all of its emulated stuff with just the binary releases. No source code involved. Most of the publishers don't even have the source code to many of these games anymore to work with in the first place.

There are many emulators for various consoles that are released under the same licence as DOSBox - the GPL. These include FCEUltra, ZSNES, FUSE, VICE, Fellow and MEKA.

Smaller details of concern are often removed from the ROM using a hex editor. It's actually not that difficult to hex out "Licensed by Nintendo" from a NES ROM and replace it with something like "GOG version".

yes, but that is an emulation, not a port.

Let's be honest - the difference between the two is highly blurred when it comes to licensing issues nowadays. I don't think GOG has released a single port on its site. Every release here is one of two things - either a native Windows release, or an emulated DOS version. We have Blood, Redneck Rampage and Duke Nukem on here, but it doesn't have a ported Windows engine - it emulates the original DOS version using a DOS emulator. DOSBox is no different than any of the emulators I mentioned above with the exception of VICE and Fellow, which do need copyrighted ROMs at present with no viable HLE alternative available.

Emulation has become the new port in gaming these days, because it's cheaper and consumer hardware is easily capable of it.

and that was my point also... anyway, the legalities and technicalities between porting and emulating is two different things. Just because it is possible to do so with DOS and DOSBox, do not mean it will be easy to do so with PS.