Another thing that hasn't been brought up in this
discussion yet is the
minor detail of museums. With the appropriate safeguards, people give and
loan collections to museums for display. Granted that is not the same as
using it, but people can still see them (Moffett Field for instance.)
Yes, there are actually museums that do allow donors to play with the
artifacts. One of them is RCS. Plug. A good number of our big peices are
privately owned, like two of the three PDP-12s, the Interdata 4, PDP-8/i,
VAX-11/750, and so on. Plug. Even though the working -12 is not mine, I
can go and play with it, as long as I respect it as not being mine. Plug.
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org