Vintage NASA software available - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

27 Oct 2001

Hi,

On Fri, 26 Oct 2001 Michael Nadeau wrote:
...
  Open Channel Software is making old NASA applications
available for
 download. There is a fee involved for what's called the NASA Classics
 collection, and the goal is to encourage commercial development of the
 applications. The list is at http://www.openchannelsoftware.com/NASA_1.html.
 I have no connection with OCS or NASA, but just happened to come across a
 press release about the offer. 
I'm not sure how their current license will encourage any develpment,
commercial or otherwise. I looked at the page for one program, for counting
lines of source code:
       http://www.openchannelsoftware.com/projects/SLOCC/

Clicking the "Get SLOCC" link reveals cost of obtaining the source code to
this written-in-Microsoft-Access-BASIC program is $100. 

According to the license, you can use, copy & modify the program only for non-
commercial, private, internal purposes. You can't distribute it to anyone
else. Very open source. How is that different from any other commercial
prodcut for which source code is/was available for a fee? (VMS?)

-- Mark