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

[William Pechter]

In article <bb0kt6F8sabU1 at mid.individual.net>,
Bill Gunshannon <billg999 at cs.uofs.edu> 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.
>
>>> 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.
>
>bill
>
>
>-- 
>Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
>billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
>University of Scranton   |
>Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>   

All employee software projects needed to be cleared by DEC legal to see
if DEC wanted to assert any ownership interest in them.

I even sent them my minor-league stuff to get it cleared.
They were usually pretty good about such weekend projects. 
Most of my stuff were CP/M and MS-DOS stuff at that time... They didn't
care about any of them since they'd never be DEC products.

Bill
-- 
-- 
Digital had it then.  Don't you wish you could buy it now!
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