OpenVMS Community License

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 7/29/20 10:27 AM, Andrew Back via cctalk wrote:
> 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.
> 

Probably right. However, that version was rather primitive doing
only a small subset of PDP-11 processors.  And, I expect it would
be rather difficult to actually find one of those versions today.

bill