IBM 360 Model 50 information?

[Jay Jaeger]

On 3/30/2019 12:35 PM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote:
>     > From: Al Kossow
> 
>     > Decades later, people are still afraid to release them. I tried to get
>     > 2065 ALDs from someone that had them and they wouldn't give them to me.
> 
> Sounds like it's time to have someone high up at the CHM talk to someone
> at IBM to get an OK; if you only ask for permission, not for IBM to cough
> up the info themselves, that might be doable.
> 
> I'd try and get a blanket OK for anything more than 20 years old, i) that
> should be long enough that they'd be OK with it, ii) a moving thing like
> that would mean you wouldn't have to go back again.
> 
> 	Noel
> 

My experience with IBM legal (who were actually quite communicative when
I approached them) on that front with IBM 1410 manuals suggests to me
that they will not ever give explicit permission, because nobody at IBM
will ever by confident that they won't end up giving away some trade
secret or other.  Even when they know the risk is nonexistant, it isn't
possible to get anyone to sign off on it.  So instead we (meaning the
collective community) are left with a situation where IBM's failure to
send a cease and desist letter of some sort becomes a kind of tacit
permission.

I suspect, but do not know of course, that the reasons that the owners
would not part with their copies was concern over losing them or concern
over their value becoming diminished by having scanned copies around.

JRJ