[Info-vax] Licenses on VAX/VMS 4.0/4.1 source code listing scans

[Simon Clubley]

On 2021-12-09, gah4 <gah4 at u.washington.edu> wrote:
> On Thursday, December 9, 2021 at 2:33:06 AM UTC-8, chris wrote:
>
>> > On Wednesday, December 8, 2021 at 9:40:07 PM UTC-8, Joerg Hoppe wrote: 
>> >> I digitized a pack of VAX/VMS 4.0/4.1 source code listings 
>> >> AH-BT13A-SE and AH-EF71A-SE, from micro fiche to PDF. 
>> >> Question is now: can I publish to the community or individuals? 
>> >> What is the license status for this old stuff (around 1985), VSI ? 
>
> (snip)
>> It may be interesting to many for historical reasons and the sources 
>> were never enough to build a working systems, so there is perhaps some 
>> fair use argument to publish. 
>
> I don't know about DEC, but IBM has some links to old manuals and
> such on bitsavers.  It seems that they didn't keep a lot of old stuff,
> or just forgot where it was, and are happy to have it there.
>
> More current manuals are on IBM's own site for download.

The manuals situation is rather interesting.

The software situation is very clear - you can't redistribute it
except under the terms of the licence it was sold to you under,
which for normal commercial software means you can't redistribute
at all.

However, does the same apply to normal old-style paper documentation ?

Is normal documentation sold under a licence which says you can't
make a copy of it and then pass on the copy to someone else ?

I'm talking about normal documentation here, not documentation
supplied to you under a NDA or similar construct (for example,
the specification for a restricted protocol).

I don't remember ever having to sign a contract that says as such
for normal old-style paper documentation so I don't know if such
restrictions are implicit under normal copyright law or whether
the restrictions simply don't exist.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.