[Info-vax] Reimplementing VMS, was: Re: OT: Oracle vs. Google re: Java

[lawrencedo99 at gmail.com]

On Thursday, June 2, 2016 at 7:04:58 PM UTC+12, Paul Sture wrote:
> As I understand it, both Samba and the Windows
> utilities provided by the Sysinterals folks were done by reverse
> engineering of the form which I wouldn't have been comfortable doing
> with VMS or its (DEC) layered products.

As far as I recall, Microsoft never tried to strongarm either of those groups into silence--as such. It did want the Samba people to sign an agreement that would have required per-client royalty payments. In the end that was overturned as part of the EU anticompetition case against Microsoft <https://fsfe.org/activities/ms-vs-eu/timeline.en.html>, <https://fsfe.org/activities/ms-vs-eu/ms-vs-eu.en.html>. And so Samba, at least, is fully functional, but remains fully Free Software.

As for reverse-engineering DEC products ... in the early days they even supplied full circuit diagram schematics for their PDP products ...