Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!pasteur!ames!amelia!msf
From: msf@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (Michael S. Fischbein)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Help us defend against VMS!
Message-ID: <375@amelia.nas.nasa.gov>
Date: 22 Mar 88 14:25:35 GMT
References: <2235@bsu-cs.UUCP> <892@cfa.cfa.harvard.EDU> <4236@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
Reply-To: msf@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (Michael S. Fischbein)
Organization: NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA
Lines: 23

In article <4236@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu> davidli@umn-cs.UUCP (Dave Meile) writes:
>  If you
>don't believe this, try writing your own version of UNIX and marketing it
>without paying AT&T any money.  You'll quickly experience the how "non
>proprietary" it really is!

You mean like Doug Comer and Xinu?  Or Tannenbaum (I think) and MINIX? Or
Rich Stallman and GNU? Or CMU and Mach?  If you don't use AT&T source code,
you don't pay AT&T.  If you rewrote VMS, you wouldn't have to pay DEC
any royalties either, except they would throw look and feel lawsuits at you.

I don't know anyone interested in writing/who has already written a PD
version of VMS.  I don't know any vendor who has been able to license
VMS from DEC either -- to be fair, I haven't asked them.  Does anybody
know of any?

		mike

-- 
Michael Fischbein                 msf@ames-nas.arpa
                                  ...!seismo!decuac!csmunix!icase!msf
These are my opinions and not necessarily official views of any
organization.