OpenVMS Community License

[Andrew Back]

On 29/07/2020 15:21, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
> On 7/29/20 10:07 AM, Antonio Carlini via cctalk wrote:
>> On 29/07/2020 14:19, Paul Koning wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Jul 29, 2020, at 4:28 AM, Antonio Carlini via cctalk
>>>> <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> ...
>>>> For those of you with hobbyist licence PAKs, I presume that pakgen.c
>>>> will work on all versions that VSI doesn't support. I know it's
>>>> frowned on but it's not really different to running PDP-11 software
>>>> is it (as that is/was generally not licenced).
>>> Not licensed?  What about the Mentec hobbyist license?  That's pretty
>>> broad and clear.
>>>
>>>     paul
>>>
>> All I can find is one on the IA:
>>
>>
>> https://web.archive.org/web/20110629021938/https://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mader/delta/download/license.txt
>>
>>
>>
>> That covers SIMH rather than real HW (afaict). If there's another one,
>> that's good.
>>
> 
> 
> It also only covered SIMH until Bob Supnik left DEC.
> 
> "MENTEC grants to CUSTOMER a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free
> license under MENTEC's INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS to use and copy
> the SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY solely for personal, non-commercial uses in
> conjunction with the EMULATOR."
> 
> Note that EMULATOR is highlighted with capitalization.
> 
> " EMULATOR shall mean software owned by Digital Equipment Corporation
> that emulates the operation of a PDP-11 processor and allows PDP-11
> programs and operating systems to run on non-PDP-11 systems. "
> 
> Here it is defined.  "owned by Digital Equipment Corporation".
> That condition ceased to exist when Bob left DEC and DEC allowed
> him to take SIMH with him.
> 
> This is plain English.  One does not need to be a lawyer to see
> what it actually says.  They were very explicit in their wording.

So presumably you could continue to use an old version of SimH that was
"owned by Digital Equipment Corporation", under the terms of this
license grant. I don't see anything there about explicit termination.

Andrew