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

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2013-10-01 22:21, JF Mezei wrote:
> 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 ?

Hard to speculate, and I believe it's the wrong approach to try to find 
out by violating agreements.

> 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 ?

It's a breach of contract between DEC and Mentec, or rather the two 
companies that have inherited that contract.
Don't matter the least what happens to it once released, or whom to. 
It's still a breach.

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

That is a big question. Doing some pure speculation on my part here, RMS 
is still a product that HP bundles with a commercial product, and part 
of the code for the PDP-11 OSes share the same code, concepts and 
technology.
I could definitely think that such bits and pieces were a reason for the 
agreement in the first place.

> 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.

Your attitude don't help. The law is pretty clear. Look up "Abandonware" 
in wikipedia, and you'll find the legal status of this. And it boils 
down to that it's still not public domain, and it is still owned by 
someone, who can step forward and claim damages.

>> 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.

The cost is, however, born the whole time anyway. Might as well make use 
of 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.

No. Look it up.

	Johnny