OpenVMS Community License

[Bob Smith]

I am not sure I understand your "as it turns out there was only one" Bill.
Am I correct in assuming you are talking about DEC owned, and meaning
that Bob Supnik one?

John Wilson's Ersatz 11, aka E11, was and is a great functioning
emulator, but not owned by DEC.

Not arguing, just making sure I understand your statement
thanks
bob

On Wed, Jul 29, 2020 at 2:27 PM Bill Gunshannon via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> On 7/29/20 2:01 PM, Antonio Carlini via cctalk wrote:
> > On 29/07/2020 15:21, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
> >>
> >> 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.
> >>
> >
> > Why? I can't find (after several minutes of searching) exactly what
> > happened when Bob Supnik left DEC.
> >
> > Did DEC give him the software or did DEC release it under the "modified
> > X-Windows " licence? If the latter,
> >
> > then DEC continued to own it and the PDP-11 release continue to be legal
> > to run under SIMH.
>
> DEC gave it to Bob Supnik as he had been the one who created it,
> developed it and maintained it.  I don't believe they ever had any
> interest in it and it was only theirs because Bob had done it
> while in their employ.  When he left they  had no interest in it
> and let him take it with him.  A quick glance at the source will
> show no DEC Copyrights and Bob's from 1993 onward.
> >
> >
> >> 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.
> >
> > One *always* needs a lawyer! They were clear, although they don't seem
> > to have said *which* DEC-owned emulator.
>
> You were free to use any.  As it turns out, there was only one.
>
> >
> > I just don't see that you can immediately dismiss the possibility that
> > DEC still owned the software.
>
> That question was asked and answered decades ago.  Might be able to
> still find something on the web, but the notion that the web keeps
> things around forever is facetious at best.
>
> >
> > DEC certainly permissively licensed other code. The OpenVMS BLISS
> > compiler was released on the Freeware CD, but I bet DEC still thought
> > they owned it.
>
> The history of SIMH has never been in question.  Except by people
> trying to rationalize using DEC's (and later Mentec's) IP without
> permission.  Some things never change.
>
> bill
>
>