30 Mar
2016
30 Mar
'16
11:34 a.m.
On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 11:20 AM, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
Sure, and that makes sense. This means, of course,
that making a good faith attempt to get permission and then use the Google approach :-) is
reasonable. What isn't reasonable is a blanket assumption that anything that's
even mildly old is no longer something its owners care about. Some software does have a
long business life; consider CDC NOS, which dates back to the 1960s but still had real
world customers in the 21st century. In that case, when the owner was asked politely,
permission was given for hobbyist use under certain restrictions, very much like we have
seen with OpenVMS. Come to think of it, OpenVMS is another example of software
substantially older than 7 years.
And GCOS. It started in 1962 as GECOS (the General Electric
Comprehensive Operating Supervisor), and has an active user base,
including companies offering support services.
-- Charles