[Info-vax] Releasing VMS openly, was: Re: vax vms licenses

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 4/18/2022 8:11 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2022-04-18, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> On 4/18/2022 6:43 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> but they ALSO are not interested enough to release the software openly either.
>>
>> That I believe!
> 
> HPE _can't_ release VAX/VMS openly, at least without investing in a
> lot of resources, money, and time to review the VMS codebase and
> any licence agreements with third parties that might have IP within
> VMS.
> 
> Before an open release could even be considered, HPE would need to
> see how they stand in that regard.
> 
> That's not just an academic question either as it has already
> happened even with the paid-for commercial licences for VMS.
> 
> Does anyone else here remember the "fun" with Display Postscript ?

Another example. Sun's release of OpenJDK.

In October 2006 Sun CEO promised to release OpenJDK as open source
in 30-60 days. It was a top priority for the CEO. First actual
release happened in May 2007 and contained several closed source
binaries (4% of the code).  In May 2008 it was down to 1%. And
in April 2009 a build all open source was done (Redhat contributed
some replacements for the last Sun closed source code). 2.5 years
and a lot of engineering and legal work - for something that
was a top priority for the CEO.

Arne