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

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2013-10-01 21:08, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> In article <l2f5s4$v79$1 at dont-email.me>,
> 	Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
>> On 2013-10-01, johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk <johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>> Are you able to quote chapter and verse wrt "emulators owned by DEC"?
>>>
>>
>> Yes. I have a copy of that licence and went looking for it online. This
>> was the first link I found after searching for text in the licence:
>>
>> http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/01/msg00039.html
>>
>> If you want it in it's original context in which most people would have
>> first seen it (you may need a magnifying glass :-)):
>>
>> http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/pdp11emu.html
>>
>
> If people are really interested I still have copies of the License as it
> was distrbuted with various packages of OS software.  The files are all
> July 31, 1997 so I assume that was the date contained in the tar file
> that contained the software and the license.

So you would have to find any ownership claims for simh back in 1997 
here then. Unless I'm confused, Bob still worked at DEC back then.

>>> I was aware of goings on related to a couple of PDP11 emulators inside DEC,
>>> and neither of them was SIMH. Doesn't mean that SIMH activity wasn't going on
>>> in parallel, mind you. But I have no recollection of word of DEC offering SIMH
>>> ever reaching UK customers.
>>
>> The licence says _owned_ by DEC. It doesn't say anything about been _sold_
>> by DEC. :-) It was a personal project by it's original author while a DEC
>> employee.
>>
>
> I was involved with the PDP-11 from around 1980 and I don't remember DEC
> ever offering an emulator, commercially or otherwise.  I know Bob Supnik
> worked for DEC, but I always thought the emulator was his pet project.
> Which probably explains why he was allowed tot ake it with him when he
> left and it has no earlier copyrights than his.

DEC actually wrote, and did push Charon for a while. Charon then got 
spun off in its own company in the general DEC dismantling.
But the license references above was not intended for Charon-11, which 
cost a lot of money.

Charon-11 was demonstrated at a DEC meeting for me back in 1998 (or if 
it was 1999) when RSX-11M-PLUS V4.6 was announced. This at DEC in Sweden.

	Johnny