the idea is simply not to take the risk of being sued / shutdown or any crap like those by helping in distribution of copyrighted ROM images. patches alone are useless without the ROMs to begin with. they are simply considered tools and are as legit as other ROM utilties on the internet (ROMBuild, MGD -> MVS converter, etc.) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You don't get the point. The originals are not needed if you generate an IPS against some known file on the OS. Afterall, a patch is really just the diff between ANY 2 files. eg. i generate an IPS between m1 and command.com and distribute that "patch", anyone with the same command.com can apply this IPS and it gives back the m1.