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

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

Bill Gunshannon <bill at server3.cs.scranton.edu> wrote:
> In article <l2f81e$t0j$1 at speranza.aioe.org>,

(snip, I wrote)

>> Working on personal project related to your company work is always
>> complicated. My understanding (again, IANAL) is that unless he was
>> very careful about it that it would belong to DEC. 
 
>> In cases where you can make a clear separation, maybe a simulator
>> for the physics of black holes, (just a random example) that 
>> obviously DEC isn't doing, then it might not be so hard.
 
>> To keep a simulator for a DEC processor separate, he might have
>> needed to document the exact times he worked on it, and show that
>> those times were personal times. Also, it might have helped to 
>> do it on hardware not owned by DEC.
 (snip of wrench story)

> Except that a PDP-11 emulator uses knowledge gained as a part of
> his employement.  There is no way to separate that by when you
> actually worked on the project.  

Which PDP-11 knowledge was available to employees, but not to
general PDP-11 users? Well, I suppose only employees would know
that, but usually the instruction set was well known, at least
to assembly programmers, and that is mostly what is needed.
I suppose also the locations of I/O registers and interrupt
vectors, but that was also known outside DEC.

Processor microcode might have been proprietary, but is normally
not used in writing emulators, unless it is specifically 
desired to emulate the micro-engine. 

> And, there is also the question
> of what his employment contract said.  And none of us will ever
> know that.  All we do know is that DEC let him take it with him
> when he left and asserts no ownership over any of the subsequent
> versions.

Did they supply written release of ownership? Letting him take
it doesn't necessarily release ownership, but might indicate
that they don't claim exclusive ownership. 

But yes, to claim exclusive ownership he would have had to
document both that it was personal time, and that only publically
available reference sources were used. 

(and, again, IANAL)

-- glen