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

[JF Mezei]

On 13-10-01 16:02, Bill Gunshannon wrote:

> Are all Canadians as naive as you are?

Nop. I am a special case. :-)  There are some normal Canadians here and
there.

>> HP would get so much bad PR from that, 
> 
> How does one get bad PR from protecting one's own property?

HP suing some small company for a museum-worthy product HP never
marketed and didn't even know it had rights to. This would look very bad.

Say that XXY company donated the source to the computer museum. How
would HP react ?

When was the last time HP sold anything related to PDP-11 ? Would the
act of donating it to the museum constitute breach of copyright in the
sense that the museum would then take the IP and make money from it ?

Does the source of the PDP-11 operating systemns have any value today ?
Would its release harm HP in any way ?


Again, this is in a context where HP does not respond to requests to
open source the PDP-11 OS. If HP responded to those requests, my
attitude would be very different.


> HP already has lawyers on staff.  What makes you think the cost would be
> high?

dept A would have to budget for the time spend by the lawyers in dept B
at HP. Just because they are internal to HP does not mean that there is
no cost to them.

And is there any department within HP which would want to allocate
budget for this product they never had ?

> No. There is no such thing in law as "implicit public domain".

If a company does not protect its IP and keeps a blind eye to breaches
of copyright/patent infringement, it loses the right to defend that
IP/copyright later on.