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

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <6cf302b2-950d-4472-9fed-208e353c517a at googlegroups.com>,
	AEF <spamsink2001 at yahoo.com> writes:
> On Wednesday, October 2, 2013 8:18:55 AM UTC-4, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> In article <524b2edb$0$61281$c3e8da3$5e5e430d at news.astraweb.com>,
>> 
>> 	JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> writes:
>> 
>> > On 13-10-01 16:02, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> [...]
>> > 
>> 
>> >> 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.
>> 
>> > 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Protecting HP's IP is already one of their jobs and therefore already
>> 
>> budgeted.
> Bill, you raise some excellent points, however . . . 
> C'mon. You don't know how busy these lawyers are and what hp's priorities are. Unless these lawyers are sitting around waiting for something to do, it still costs hp because the lawyers are then not free to do other work -- work which hp might find more important. 

Sure, and that might be making coffee, but I doubt it.  The assumption
here seems to be that it would cost HP more than the IP is worth to
defend it.  I don't see it that way. And, it is irrelevant to the real
issue which is can someone just post HP's IP on the web. That is illegal,
and immoral.  It is theft, plain and simple.  Why do people have such
a hard time accepting this?  Nobody wants to see the PDP-11 OSes freed
more than I do, but I won;t steal them.  Heck, I have tapes I got from
Mentec in the basement. But I am not going to load them on a machine
and use them unless the opportunity to do that in accord with the license
agreement I signed re-develops.  But it won't.  :-)

>> > And is there any department within HP which would want to allocate
>> 
>> > budget for this product they never had ?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> See above.  Protecting HP's IP is already part of the legal departments
>> 
>> job.
> Depends on their priorities as to which IP to focus on, and how many lawyers they choose to have, and what their workload is, which you don't know.
>  
> This reminds me of when I was in graduate school in physics. We had 4 tape drives hooked up to our VAX 11/750. Three of them were not-so-great Kennedy-brand drives, and one was a TU78 (or TU77). The TU78 (or TU77) worked virtually flawlessly. It was really, really loud, though. But our part physicist part sysmgr told us not to use it except if the other 3 were busy. This is because it wasn't really ours. It was a loaner to make up for something Digital couldn't deliver on time. 
> Then it was time for them to pick it up. They didn't pick it up. We had it all ready to go, called them several times and they just never came by to pick up the thing. I don't remember how long that went on. Weeks, maybe months. So we kept it. In fact, it was _their_ field person who suggested they let him hook it back up to the VAX! 
> Years went by and they still didn't want the thing. It was still there and still working great when I graduated in 1991.
> Bill, what would _you_ have done in this situation? Just curious.

Whatever my boss told me to do as long as it didn't involve me breaking
any laws.  :-)

I have an Alpha in the basement (you should see my basement and you really
should have seen it 6 months ago!!)  We were given it by HP to run VMS on
for the one remaining course we had that still used VMS.  No written
agreement, they just said "You really should move to an Alpha from that
VAX.  Here, have one."  And I did.  Until the course was re-written to
no longer be done on VMS (It stopped using COBOL, too even though I still
have COBOL on our Unix servers.)  I emailed the guy at HP who gave it to
us.  No answer.  I tried a few more times.  Nothing.  So it sat in a corner
of the lab until the day I was told to get all the DEC stuff out of there.
Then the VAXen went to a museum (except one that went to the landfill :-().
The PDP-11's were mine and came home. (They also later went to museums.)
And the Alpha came home because I really couldn't stomach throwing it
out which was what the University wanted done with all of it.  It is
going to someone who I hope will use it in a museum very shortly.

But neither of these involve copyright. In both yours and my case the device
in question was given to us and the owner showed no interest in retrieving
it.  I have had the same thing on warranty repairs where the vendor sends
me a new item and states they do not want the bad one back.

>> 
>> >> 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.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 1.  That is not necessarily so.  Try it and see where you end out.
>> 
>> 2.  It still isn't "public domain" as that is a very specific legal
>> 
>>     concept and the requirements are spelled out plainly in many
>> 
>>     places.
> Hmmm. I think there is a bit of use it or lose it for at least _some_ things.

Lose it does not mean public domain.  Lose it means someone else can
register it.

> Sometimes you see "Esso" stickers on Exxon gas pumps. Exxon doesn't want to lose the rights to Esso. 

If you see Esso on an american pump it is porbably just something really old.
The name changed to Exxon, but only in the US as far as I know.  I know they
were still Esso as of the last time I was in Germany which was about 6 years
ago.

> I was told they have to do this or the name goes up for grabs. 

Ridiculous as they never stopped using the Esso trade mark.

> My brother-in-law's father told me of a client (or friend, perhaps) who kept paying for the right to a name for a business, even though the business closed. The guy just wants to hold on to the rights to that name. He has to pay something like $50 or $150 a year in fees. Of course I'm not talking hardware and software here. OK, you said it isn't necessarily so. Just mentioning a couple of cases where it _is_ so, AFAIK. 

That is no different than people who continue to pay for domain names they
no longer use.  

On a side note, how about a carriage return once in a while.  640 and
960 character lines are real hard to quote.

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>