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From: phipps@fortune.UUCP (Clay Phipps)
Newsgroups: net.unix,net.unix-wizards,net.legal
Subject: Re: Where's the (c) on UNIX?
Message-ID: <2893@fortune.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 28-Mar-84 23:47:45 EST
Article-I.D.: fortune.2893
Posted: Wed Mar 28 23:47:45 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 30-Mar-84 02:35:08 EST
References: <161@idi.UUCP>
Organization: Fortune Systems, Redwood City, CA
Lines: 31

In a related matter, I remember hearing a while back
that all of IBM's OS/360 source code is now "public domain".
I vaguely recall that this applied to OS/360 tools such as the compilers.
IBM's OS/360 source code and internal documentation all bore the legend:
"Licensed Material -- Property of IBM", along with a copyright notice.

No flames, please, this is not to say that you'd really want to use it
(and certainly not JCL; perhaps some UNIX-like shell could be hacked in ?),
but the legal questions may be very similar.

I wonder what this means for owners of the S/370-compatible
(except for io architecture) IBM XT/370 ?
Why be required to be part of a mainframe installation (for megabucks)
that licenses VM to you when you can use OS/360 for free ?
Remember, it's multitasking in its MVT incarnation,
and many 1 MIPS IBM mainframes did a lot with only 1 MB of memory.
The resident part of the OS was about 96KB on a S/360-65, as I recall,
and the standard 2314 14-inch disk was only 40MB back then !

Of course, there is the fundamental problem that to OS/360,
an interactive task was just a high priority batch job.

Any legal eagles out there who can explain why UNIX will not also
become "public domain" in the future ?

-- Clay Phipps

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