To Al Kossow at bitsavers

This is a long response, but I beg all people interested to read all of it. And to start with, I generally agree with Paul. Especially about the fact that just because you don't know who the owner is does in no way make something "abandonware" (and this is not specifically you, Ian.) But more below... On 2015-11-15 05:25, Ian Finder wrote: What is "retrocomputing"? And how do you mean it will die because some people think that it is not above the law? I don't know exactly what you have done, so I can't really comment on it. But in general, yes, it is a sad problem that sometimes it is hard to figure out the legal status and who is the owner of software. But that is not the case with the PDP-11 software talked about in this thread. Agreed. But that is still not the case here. Very true. But not the case in this specific thread. I disagree with almost all of the above, with the exception of "theft". As others mentioned, the word "theft" is not a good word to use here, and it has been promoted by organizations that wants to associate the "problem" with something that people will react emotionally to. But for software that in general you can't find the owner, and even the legal status is hard to figure out, I think that at least some basic effort to preserve and share things can be nice. However, people who use your argument, Ian, tend to start applying it to anything they want, which is, for me, crossing a line that I do not agree with. In the specific example of the PDP-11 software that this thread is about, it's not even "abandonware". The term "abandonware" is in it self really problematic, because it is very much a subjective term. If you cannot get access or permission, and you also don't get any response, you consider the software to be "abandonware", which might be very far from the truth. The owner might not want to talk to you. The owner might not want anyone else to know he is the owner. The owner might be busy, have a bad spamfilter, or whatever. That do not make the software "abandonware". If you want to claim that something is "abandonware", then you should first do a *very* thorough work trying to locate the owner, and document everything that you find, or don't find, and really show that you tried everything. If that still turns up nothing, then I can agree that *maybe* the term "abandonware" might be applicable. I agree that I have a hard time calling software theft "theft". For me as well, "theft" involves denying the rightful owner access/use of the item. Intellectual property is a weird concept. However (and I hope people actually reads this far), XX2247 decided to buy the software from Mentec. There is an easy trail to follow, showing that there is a legal entity that still owns this software. And even if you disagree with the "theft" thing, consider this: the owner of XX2247 made an effort that cost money, in order to preserve this software for the future (an effort people here use as an argument for their actions that might not be legal). By doing what XX2247 did, they agreed to follow the DEC-Mentec agreement. If people put the PDP-11 software up in general, they are violating copyright laws (and possibly IP rights). In addition to themselves potentially breaking the law, they are potentially also setting XX2247 up, since the owners of the IP rights could argue that XX2247 are also guilty for not protecting those IP rights. So in the end, you might be setting the person who tried to preserve this software up for legal effects that he certainly do not deserve. Now, what do you think is the right way to deal with this? Me personally, I think we need to get HP to release it all. After that, I'm pretty sure people would find it much easier to get access to PDP-11 software. Johnny