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

[Richard B. Gilbert]

On 10/26/2012 7:58 PM, David Goodwin wrote:
> In article <k6cofp$f3d$1 at solani.org>, M.Kraemer at gsi.de says...
>>
>> JF Mezei schrieb:
>>
>>> What would it take for HP to opensource VMS ?  Since they have already
>>> written off BCS and dwindled development to a bare minimum, would HP
>>> really lose anything by opensourcing VMS ?
>>
>> It may well be that they don't own all of the IP hidden in VMS.
>> Remember that IBM has refused several times to opensource OS/2,
>> for exactly that reason.
>
> Of course OS/2 was actually a joint project between IBM and Microsoft
> (There were several versions of "Microsoft OS/2", v1.3 being the last
> IIRC).
>
> Windows NT was originally going to be the next version of OS/2 until
> Windows 3.x took off and Microsoft decided to change direction. I think
> its OS/2 environment subsystem survived until Windows XP (NT 5.1).
>
> So of course for IBM to open-source OS/2 they'd have to get Microsoft to
> agree as well.
>
> I expect it would be a lot easier for HP to open-source OpenVMS.
> Anything important was probably written by DEC or has been open-sourced
> by third-parties already (eg, CDE+Motif).
>

I don't think it's that simple or easy!  VMS makes use of intellectual 
property (Patents and/or Copyrights) that is licensed by third parties