To Al Kossow at bitsavers

[Mouse]

> If people put the PDP-11 software up in general, they are violating
> copyright laws (and possibly IP rights).

In general, probably.  But I have seen it said that there are
jurisdictions that do not recognize copyrights other than their own, or
possibly even do not recognize copyrights at all.  I would be surprised
if there were not some networking with at least one such, leading to
the interesting (in the abstract) question of where the infringement,
if any, would occur if someone in such a jurisdiction were to make it
available.

> Now, what do you think is the right way to deal with this?

Personally?  I think the rightest way is to eliminiate the legal
fiction called "intellectual property", as a good-sounding experiment
that has failed.  It is not producing the effects it was put in place
to produce and it is producing a lot of other, ill, effects.

However, it is, to put it mildly, unlikely that will happen; too many
of the mechanisms that would have to be convinced have a vested
interest in keeping it the way it is.

I think the best thing "we" can do here is preserve things in a
demonstrably not-directly-usable form.  That is, however, difficult;
second best is probably to privately keep archive copies, not
redistributed, until and unless someone comes forward with a credible
claim to being the owner.

> Me personally, I think we need to get HP to release it all.

Quite aside from the other possible projblems with that mentioned
upthread, it's possible that the contract with Mentec is such that
that's not an option for them.  (If HP doesn't have a copy of that
contract either, the Right Thing would be for them to negotiate some
kind of replacement with XX2247.  Unfortunately, I can't see any
business case for them to spend the staff time that would involve.)

It sucks.  But, sometimes, the world loses. :-(

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