[Info-vax] DEC product licencing, was: Re: VSI has a new CEO

[Rich Alderson]

Lee Gleason <lee.gleason at comcast.net> writes:

> On 8/6/2021 1:17 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> On 2021-08-06, Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
>>> On 2021-08-06, Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>>> On 8/6/2021 1:28 PM, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:

>>>>> Right, though IIRC some licenses contained a right-to-upgrade clause.

>>>> I have NEVER seen a DEC license that included "right-to-upgrade", and,
>>>> through the years, I've seen many licenses.

>> BTW, I remember when I first started in the DEC world, my boss showed
>> me some old slim stapled books (old even then!) of printed patches, with
>> a different patch on each page, that you had to key in manually to patch
>> early versions of RSTS/E. Does anyone else remember those ?
>>  > Apparently that's how patches used to be distributed in the DEC world
>> for RSTS/E in the really early days. I don't know if you could pay for
>> a paper or magnetic tape option in those days.

>    It was called "The Software Dispatch". They did it for RSX11M as 
> well, probably other PDP11 OSes too (I only saw the RSTS/e and RSX ones).

There also were versions of Software Dispatch for Tops-10 and TOPS-20.

In addition to the standard SD, which came every N weeks for some small value
of N > 3, there was a separate, occasional document (CTCO?  Summat like
"Confidential Technical Change Order" oder so etwas) which detailed patches
which actually affected security concerns.  Did those exist for the little
machines?

-- 
Rich Alderson					  news at alderson.users.panix.com
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