13 Mar
2020
13 Mar
'20
10:16 p.m.
Hello!
You are indeed correct there Thomas, The entire collection of
operating systems for the S/360 in the form of what OS/360 contains
are freely available, because IBM never bothered to assert their
interests, they in fact allowed one of the authors to "own it", he
then turned around and made it freely available to the entire Hercules
community. The same is true for all of those except for TPF, even the
first versions IBM wrote about the same time as VM/370 Release 6 sadly
is copyrighted. Release 6 never was by the way, and so a goodly amount
is available to us. It's the cost included items that are not there.
As for what's happening with regards to VMS and its relations, I do not know.
Here's something that I can relate to, I ran an AT&T PC6300, and
shortly after they made the mistake of buying NCR, I needed to track
down some spares and also a memory expansion board, the responding
individual did not want to believe I was asking about a PC not one of
the cash registers...... I eventually resolved my problems. I still
miss that machine and its relations.
However..... Let's continue the discussion.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
On Fri, Mar 13, 2020 at 4:52 PM Thomas DeBellis
<tommytimesharing at gmail.com> wrote:
I don't know if that's the whole story; it's not just that monster OS/360. I
believe also DOS/360, DOS/VS, MVS, VM/370, and TSS/370; I don't know about TPF. MTS
would be cool (but it isn't IBM).
I believe the z versions of the above have to be licensed, even for Hercules. There was
some class action about allowing this, but I don't know how it all turned out.
That's surprising given the Amdahl decisions.
Yes, I have a very large dent in my skull from a lawyer in our company about copyrights.
This was even for firmware that would never see the light of day.
A number of sources for Tops-20 assemble the copyright right into the executable in low
memory so that if you try to type it out, you first get the text (followed by gibberish).
Use of GLXLIB will force this. I'm not sure if it is in Galaxy or the EXEC, but one
of my favorite comments of the aforementioned code is, "Somebody could steal
Tops-20!!"
________________________________
On 3/13/20 4:35 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
I know some old OS/360 versions are freely available, but that's for a different
reason. They are in the public domain because IBM exposed the sources without copyright
notice, at a time when US law said that absence of notice meant the item is in the public
domain. The same applies to various other software; CDC's COS comes to mind.
The law changed quite a while ago, but when I started in the software profession it was
pounded into our skulls to put copyright notices on stuff because back then it actually
made a real difference.
paul
________________________________
On Mar 13, 2020, at 4:24 PM, Thomas DeBellis <tommytimesharing at gmail.com>
wrote:
I should add, however, that even IBM has come to understand the value of having people
understanding and adoring their operating systems and maximizing the knowledgeable user
base. Otherwise, finding people to do maintenance can be problematic (== $$$) or
impossible.
My understanding is that while you can't get the most current version of the various
390 based OS's, you can get older ones for free for hobbyist usage. OK...