Ben Ketcham wrote:
> 
> | Johnny Billquist <bqt@Update.UU.SE> wrote:
> | > Just for your information, this is called software piracy...
> | > ULTRIX is a commercial product, even if the owner just have been bought.
> | WHO CARES? That bunch of a**holes who call themselves "the U.S. government?"
> | F*CK THEM! I don't consider them an authority anyway.
> 
> Regardless of your opinion of the US government, I think that the
> *owners* of the product in question, i.e., DEC (wholly-owned
> subsidiary of Compaq though they now be) might care a little bit.

True.  Also, remember that the laws regarding copyrights are more or
less global.  
However, the issue of right/wrong is far more complicated than that,
(and it is a totally separate issue from lawas and wheteher the company
cares).  It isn't quite as simple as "If I pirate software I'm doing a
bad thing."  What if I wouldn't ever buy it (I wouldn't spend all that
money on a $10 VAX).  Now what about if I just use it?  

> And whoever legally aquired the CDROM containing Ultrix in the first
> place almost certainly had to, in one way or another, agree to respect
> that ownership, before opening the package containing the CD.

Does that really matter?  I though that copyright exists regardless of
whether you agree to the terms on the media package.  If that's not
true, then if I somehow found an Ultrix CD lying on the street, then I
could freely put it up for FTP, install it on many machines, distribute
cracks for the licensing scheme, etc.  I somehow doubt things are that
way.

> You can argue that since DEC no longer supports Ultrix, they should
> open it up in some way, perhaps a cheap/free non-commercial license
> like SCO has done, and I would agree.  But AFAIK, they have not
> done that yet.
> 
> --ben

So, what's the status of VAX Ultrix anyways?  Can you still buy licenses
and CDs?  The one time I tried DEC sent me to a couple dead ends.  I
more or less gave up.
  
-- 
|  Boris Gjenero <bgjenero@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>              |
|  Home page:  http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/~bgjenero/     |
|  "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to   |
|  depend greatly on our own point of view." - Obi-Wan Kenobi, ROTJ  |