16 Apr
2003
16 Apr
'03
5:22 p.m.
I agree wholeheartedly. If I'd not bought a set of original tapes for
my Data General mini, I'd have a lump of recycleable metal instead of a
functioning, neato computer.
Now, I bought the tapes fair and sqare, but from a licensing standpoint
they should have been either returned to DG or destroyed. They were
really hard to find as a large percentage of DG customers complied with
the license. The US Forest Service for instance destroyed all of thier
media, documentation, etcetera. They also blanked the drives on the
machines they sold to scrappers.
So far as I know, I'm the only private person on the planet with a full
install set for AOS/VS II v3.0 and TCP/IP. Those three tapes are golden.
I also have several versions of thier ades/adex diagnostic software
which contains microcode for ALL data general MV (Eagle) machines.
These tapes are all completely illegal for me to own. Until a couple of
years ago the OS and tcpip were available from DG, but they wanted
$1300.00 for them. I told DG where to stick it and instead dropped
$300.00 on a 9track, controller, and the golden tapes.
I doubt any court in the world would convict me for this. Especially in
light of DG's aquisition by EMC about a year after I got the machine up
and running.
I was totally floored that Digital had thier hobbyist license for VMS
and layered products. I signed up right away! Data General might still
be making computers if they weren't such tightasses.
Regards,
Jeff
Lawrence Walker wrote:
Yup, version 5 and it won't do MFM and RLL HDs. Can
any justification be made for any restrictions on the
dissemnation of old software such as this which in no way
cuts into the sales of his newest product ?
This is an on-going debate among classic computer
collectors and some formalistic posture as to the useage
of outmoded software is ludicrous. Most of the old
hardware we attempt to get up and running would be
consigned to landfills if we religeously held to that
position. This is not about stealing the bread from some
hardworking programmers table but should be about his
responsibility to the community that enabled him to
continue his type of work. If it's no longer a viable product
and is not supported, all deals are off. This would not
justify someone coming along and marketing his product.
That's a different ball of wax.
I just checked my version of Spinrite 1.2a. Under
liscensing it says:
o Consultant License --
Consultants who wish to repair and revitalize systems
belonging to others may do so by executing our
CONSULTING USE LICENSING AGREEMENT
and paying a $10 fee each time SpinRite is used on
another system.
SpinRite must not, of course, be installed onto those
drives.
I hope those taking this position have religeously
submitted the $10 whenever they've used it on someone
elses machine.
Lawrence