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

[JF Mezei]

On 13-10-03 05:48, Johnny Billquist wrote:

> Let us be clear here. Technically, according to law, we are not allowed 
> to distribute it, nor run it without a license.
> 
> The discussions here really boils down to a "will HP bother"? And for 
> people on the receiving end, chances are they will not. For the 
> distributing end, maybe chances are also that they will not.

That is the crux of the matter here.

In some recent judgement about battles between handset makers, a judge
ordered one company to make available IPs at reasonable price because
they were for very basic concepts.

So, I ask HP for rights to publish RSX or RSTS. HP doesn't reply.
I go to court and get judge to force HP to pronounce itself, and if HP
says "NO", then the judge can order HP to make it available for $1 or
other amount because HP failed to provide reasonable excuse.

Making public 30 year old programs would not impact HP's competitiveness
today (especially since HP is winding down its OS divisions).

But here is the second crux of the matter:  because there is likely too
little interest in the sources, the current owner doesn't have any
motivation to go through the trouble and money of waking the HP monster
up to get it to look into its archives for the status of the stuff and
come back with an answer (whether through simple lawyer process or via a
court).


However, if social media campaign wer eto be organised and get attention
of media on how HP is allwing historical computer archives to die
instead of making them public, then HP's PR department might decided it
is worth making them public.

At the end of the day, this is all about these operating systems having
historical value, not about having commercial value, and the goal is to
preserve them by making them public instead of protectiong them in a
vault where they will be forgotten and lost within HP  (it is likely
already lost when HP got rid of ZKO).