[Info-vax] [Attn: HP Employees] PDP-11 OS hobbyist licensing

[JF Mezei]

While simh may or may not have ties to DEC, it is simply a hardware
emulator and has nothing to do with any operating system running on it.

So licensing issues for simh itself are not related to licensing issues
for PDP-11 operating systems.

Out of curiosity, was simh freely distributed while DEC was still alive
? If so, and if DEC did not send threatening lawyer letters to Mr
Supnik, it would imply that DEC condoned this distribution.

Similarly, if the current owner of the PDP 11 software were torelease
the source into the wild, and HP didn't even notice, it would mean that
HP did not assert its rights over the software and thus it can become
public domain.

Remember that one reason large corps send threatheing lawyer letters to
people isn't to prevent the type of use being made, but rather to
maintain/assert onwership of the product/IP to prevent it from becoming
public domain though lack of action to protect one's own IP.

So, if HP is unaware of its rights over PDP-11 or doesn't care, then
making the source public domain should be easy, just publish it, and
wait a few months to see if there are theathening letter from HP lawyers.

At worse, the web site that published the software would be told to
remove the links to the source code immediatly. But my guess is that HP
would go beyond that (especially if the software were already in the
wild and on many many web sites.)