18 Oct
2011
18 Oct
'11
9:38 a.m.
From: Eric Smith <eric at brouhaha.com>
Prior to March 1, 1989, the effective date of the
Berne Convention
Implementation Act of 1988. It is *exactly* because IBM didn't assert
copyright on the software; to assert copyright on the software would have
required placing copyright notices on the software, which was not done.
Whether intentional or not, the lack of those notices is what resulted in
them being public domain.
Your statement appears to be correct. On the source I have for 3.8 they
specifically state copyright = none or n/a. Thanks for pointing this out.
> For years including MVS 3.8 you got almost all
the source just to be
> able to do a sysgen. I was never a sysprog and never did a sysgen until
> a few years ago, so I have no idea why they shipped it that way. But
> they did, and everybody who bought a system got the OS to be able to do
> sysgens and bring up their own system. That doesn't mean the OS and
> tools were open source,
The provision of source code to a customer combined
with the lack of
copyright is what made the tools open source.
I disagree. The provision of source code to anybody who wants it, whether a
licensee or not, is what makes something open source. If you can't get the
source unless you buy hardware and sign a license agreement, that is
certainly not open source.
> I'm near certain if you didn't buy a
system and sign a license
> agreement you had no legal way to get the OS or compilers.
Not true. Since there was no copyright, you could
legally obtain a copy
from anyone else that had one.
That is just conjecture and nothing more. There's no evidence anybody who
wasn't a paying customer obtained a copy.
> If not, it makes no sense to restrict manuals and
make a series of
> manuals only for licensed customers when the source code is freely
> available.
It makes perfect sense. It is a business decision.
In the 1960s it
wasn't even obvious that software could be copyrighted at all, but
manuals definitely could.
That suggests to me there was an intent to protect the source and they
didn't know how. YMMV.
> I have never heard that the source was available
without a license
> which in turn requires a hardware purchase, I don't consider that open
> source.
If the software (including source code) is in the
public domain, legally
available to you at no charge with no restrictions on redistribution,
it's not open source?
It is in the public domain *now* because somebody (Rich Fochtman) received
explicit permission from IBM along with the archive tapes, and made them
available on a web site. Since *at the time it was released* none of these
OS were posted anywhere and were shipped only to paying, licensed hardware
customers on tapes, it was not open source at the time.