Johnny Billquist wrote:
On 2012-08-08
23:17, Mouse<mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG> wrote:
>The
rights were bought from Mentec by XX2247, LLC
With a name like that it's clearly someone who actually has some DEC
clue, not just a random holding company. I'd call that good.
As Al Kossov alluded to, the "someone" is Dave Carroll. Ex. DEC, ex
Mentec, and the last person around at Mentec who did the development
of this software.
XX2247.LLC has been inactive for a number of years.
The name refers to the special key used to lock a DEC
console. The web site specifies "Under Construction".
You can do a search at whois.
Now that you have confirmed this publicly (well at least
to the few individuals who might actually care), I can say
that I arrived at the same conclusion a few months ago.
When I attempted to contact Dave at the location where
he actually works (after all, owning the company which
owns the rights to the PDP-11 software IP will no longer
pay the bills), Dave neglected to return my phone calls
and e-mails. At my age, I can't remember the name of
that company, but I seem to remember the name starts
with "A".
Yes, it is a good sign. However, don't anyone hold
their breath. The
age old problem of HP still have a controlling interest in all this is
still around and just as unsolved as ever before.
When DEC sold the rights to the IP for the software to
Mentec, DEC probably retained a veto on most decisions
with respect to hobby use. HP now has that control. In
addition, even commercial use now seems to be blocked
as far as the purchase of a license is concerned.
My guess is that until the issues are resolved, Dave and everyone
else are keeping quite.
Jerome Fine