On 2022-04-18, Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> On 4/18/2022 6:43 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> Chris Townley <news@cct-net.co.uk> wrote:
>>>> Looks like murky waters, probably even for I.P. Lawyers and courts.
>>>
>>> But are HP even interested?
>>
>> No, that's the basic problem.
>> HP are not interested enough to go after people illegally using the software
>
> I would not necessarily rely on that.
>
> Legal department may have a policy of pursuing all copyright
> infringements for the signal value.
>
>> but they ALSO are not interested enough to release the software openly either.
>
> That I believe!
>

HPE _can't_ release VAX/VMS openly, at least without investing in a
lot of resources, money, and time to review the VMS codebase and
any licence agreements with third parties that might have IP within
VMS.

Before an open release could even be considered, HPE would need to
see how they stand in that regard.

That's not just an academic question either as it has already
happened even with the paid-for commercial licences for VMS.

Does anyone else here remember the "fun" with Display Postscript ?

You want VMS on VAX ? Go and write your own compatible version of VMS and
include VAX as a target. That's more likely to happen than HPE freely
releasing VMS for VAX because of the issues HPE would have to deal with,
even if there was still a will within HPE to go through that process.

Simon.

PS: You want another example ? What about the open release of the
DEC PDP-11 operating systems ? A lot of community effort has gone
into trying to get HPE to do that and still nothing has happened.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.

On 4/18/2022 8:11 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2022-04-18, Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> On 4/18/2022 6:43 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> but they ALSO are not interested enough to release the software openly either.
>>
>> That I believe!
>
> HPE _can't_ release VAX/VMS openly, at least without investing in a
> lot of resources, money, and time to review the VMS codebase and
> any licence agreements with third parties that might have IP within
> VMS.
>
> Before an open release could even be considered, HPE would need to
> see how they stand in that regard.
>
> That's not just an academic question either as it has already
> happened even with the paid-for commercial licences for VMS.
>
> Does anyone else here remember the "fun" with Display Postscript ?

Another example. Sun's release of OpenJDK.

In October 2006 Sun CEO promised to release OpenJDK as open source
in 30-60 days. It was a top priority for the CEO. First actual
release happened in May 2007 and contained several closed source
binaries (4% of the code). In May 2008 it was down to 1%. And
in April 2009 a build all open source was done (Redhat contributed
some replacements for the last Sun closed source code). 2.5 years
and a lot of engineering and legal work - for something that
was a top priority for the CEO.

Arne

> HPE _can't_ release VAX/VMS openly, at least without investing in a
> lot of resources, money, and time to review the VMS codebase and
> any licence agreements with third parties that might have IP within
> VMS.

This is certainly the case for later versions, certainly anything with
DECWindows in it. Lots of constraints there.

I doubt it's the case for VMS 4.7 though, which was all in-house before
the Era of Obsessive Code Reuse.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On Tuesday, April 19, 2022 at 1:43:02 PM UTC+12, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> > HPE _can't_ release VAX/VMS openly, at least without investing in a
> > lot of resources, money, and time to review the VMS codebase and
> > any licence agreements with third parties that might have IP within
> > VMS.
> This is certainly the case for later versions, certainly anything with
> DECWindows in it. Lots of constraints there.
>
> I doubt it's the case for VMS 4.7 though, which was all in-house before
> the Era of Obsessive Code Reuse.
> --scott

Would DECwindows be such a problem today? The basic X server has
always been open source and given DEC had a hand in designing and
building X11 it seems unlikely the would have licensed 3rd party bits
there.

Motif was licensed from The Open Group but they released it as open
source under the LGPL in 2012. Over on Alpha, CDE was also licensed from
The Open Group and it too was released under the LGPL in 2012. So
probably no issue with HPE or VSI releasing the code for this stuff.

Of course none of this is stopping HPE from just generating a single
non-expiring hobbyist license and emailing it to someone with a note
saying anyone is free to use and redistribute it under the terms of the
original hobbyist license. Code would be nice but really I'm more
interested in access to and preservation of the historic DEC releases
of VMS.

On 04/19/22 01:25, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 4/18/2022 8:11 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> On 2022-04-18, Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>> On 4/18/2022 6:43 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>> but they ALSO are not interested enough to release the software
>>> openly either.
>>>
>>> That I believe!
>>
>> HPE _can't_ release VAX/VMS openly, at least without investing in a
>> lot of resources, money, and time to review the VMS codebase and
>> any licence agreements with third parties that might have IP within
>> VMS.
>>
>> Before an open release could even be considered, HPE would need to
>> see how they stand in that regard.
>>
>> That's not just an academic question either as it has already
>> happened even with the paid-for commercial licences for VMS.
>>
>> Does anyone else here remember the "fun" with Display Postscript ?
>
> Another example. Sun's release of OpenJDK.
>
> In October 2006 Sun CEO promised to release OpenJDK as open source
> in 30-60 days. It was a top priority for the CEO. First actual
> release happened in May 2007 and contained several closed source
> binaries (4% of the code). In May 2008 it was down to 1%. And
> in April 2009 a build all open source was done (Redhat contributed
> some replacements for the last Sun closed source code). 2.5 years
> and a lot of engineering and legal work - for something that
> was a top priority for the CEO.
>
> Arne
>

That was Sun, who had a mission to make Solaris open source as
well, still being developed and thriving to this day, Openindiana,
with many ex Sun engineers contributing to the project. More or
less equivalent to Solaris 11, full desktop with xfce4, out of
the box...

Chris

On 2022-04-21, David Goodwin <dgsoftnz@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, April 19, 2022 at 1:43:02 PM UTC+12, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> > HPE _can't_ release VAX/VMS openly, at least without investing in a
>> > lot of resources, money, and time to review the VMS codebase and
>> > any licence agreements with third parties that might have IP within
>> > VMS.
>> This is certainly the case for later versions, certainly anything with
>> DECWindows in it. Lots of constraints there.
>>
>> I doubt it's the case for VMS 4.7 though, which was all in-house before
>> the Era of Obsessive Code Reuse.
>> --scott
>
> Would DECwindows be such a problem today? The basic X server has
> always been open source and given DEC had a hand in designing and
> building X11 it seems unlikely the would have licensed 3rd party bits
> there.
>

Display Postscript. It had to be removed from DECwindows, so unfortunately
there's one example right there of third party code causing problems.

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.