[Info-vax] VLF: The 35th Anniversary Communique from the VMS Liberation Front

[JF Mezei]

On 12-10-25 21:19, Michael Kraemer wrote:

> It may well be that they don't own all of the IP hidden in VMS.

You mean to say that Hoff didn't write VMS all by himself and copied his
homework from other students in class ? :-) :-)

If there are portions bound by copyright, then HP would have contracts
that grant them limited use of certain technologies to be embedded in
VMS. It shouldn't be hard to find the drawer that contains those
contracts. And most companies that did that no longer exist anyways (for
instance, the DHCP server and GUI management tools came from Join which
no longer exist)

X/Motif is interesting because it is proprietary when embeded in a
commercial system, but opensourced when embedded in an opensource
system. This is why it is available on the hobbyist systems, but for
commercial sales, HP has to hand over royalty money to X consortium or
whoever.

They could progressively release VMS portions. For instance, release TPU
right away if they know it has no liens to other companies. Meanwhile,
you look into if anyone inherited the IP from Join.COM or if the DHCP
server is now considered public domain.

it may take a couple of years before the whole VMS environment is
available as open source. But if they started now, it would give clear
guidance.