22 Aug
2007
22 Aug
'07
6:38 a.m.
On Wed, 22 Aug 2007, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
On Tue, 2007-08-21 at 21:47 -0700, Zane H. Healy
wrote:
Well it certainly used to be the case that when you bought a VAX it came
with a base VMS license, on top of which you could add licenses for
additional users (or 'unlimited' if you were rich) and layered products.
And you could transfer any license but base from one machine to another on
paying a few hundred quid to DEC. And if you bought a second hand machine
by rights you had to pay the fees to transfer the licenses over into your
name.
Of course if you had the PAKs from the previous owners you could still run
VMS and your apps. But the license keys would be in their name and I can't
see how this would be legal. Unless this practice was not legal in the UK
all along and Digital just got away with it...
In any case simh has no base license and if you transfered one from a real
microvax you'd be lying. I suspect with Charon SRI have got HP to issue
base licenses to go with their soft-VAXen.
Andrew
SIMH can't be used for VAX emulation in a
non-Hobbyist setting
legally.
That probably depends where you are. A bone of contention with certain
Linux distributions is their lack of MP3 support, which is left out
simply because the US allows software patents and is a very litigious
country.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was perfectly legal to use Simh outside
the US in a commercial environment. The licences may say otherwise, but
not be legally valid.