1 Jun
2007
1 Jun
'07
3:38 p.m.
On 6/1/07, Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Richard wrote:
Sgi's position on Irix as explained by a sales droid in the Dallas office
was: "Sgi hardware has an implicit license to run the release of Irix
installed on the machine at the time it's support contract expires. The
unspoken position of the company is you can run any version of the software
that you can find media to install if from. We will sell you a copy of the
media for $600 but you must purchase a support contract first. But I can't
sell you a support contract for your Indy as it has been declared obsolete
and EOL. So you are caugfht in a Catch-22. I can't officially tell you to
go to eBay and look for a set of media but that is probably the best source
at this time."
This was in 2001 when I purchased my first Indy.
--
www.blackcube.org - The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers
I've not installed IRIX from scratch before.
I recently purchased
some install media from ebay and the item description said "does not
include licenses". Is this boiler plate disclaimer, or am I still
needing something else to install the OS? Another item on ebay says
it *does* include licenses. Is there some sort of license key?
Does SGI have a hobbyist/deprecated-ware license available?
I believe it "merely" means that it would be illegal to install IRIX on
any
hardware if you don't possess a valid licence key for it; I don't think
any of
the IRIX OS releases are locked in any way and *need* some sort of key to
function.
I do recall feeding keys into the OS (6.5.3) for certain high-end video
software many years ago though, so certainly some *apps* are crippled
without
appropriate licences (how easy it would be to circumvent that, I don't
know)