Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ucdavis!sunny!poage
From: poage@sunny.UUCP (Tom Poage)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: XDOS Lets DOS Programs Run On Unix Systems
Keywords: Licensing and copyright problems?
Message-ID: <346@sunny.UUCP>
Date: 16 Nov 88 18:22:27 GMT
References: <331@hrc.UUCP> <409@telly.UUCP>
Reply-To: ucdavis.ucdavis.edu!sunny!poage (Tom Poage)
Distribution: na
Organization: UCDMC Clinical Engineering, Sacto., CA
Lines: 36

In article <409@telly.UUCP> evan@telly.UUCP (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
>
>XDOS is designed to "compile" DOS programs into Unix binaries  [. . .]
>
>Evan Leibovitch, SA of System Telly               If Jesus was a Jew
>Located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario, Canada       how come he had  
>evan@telly.on.ca -or- uunet!attcan!telly!evan        a Mexican name?

What does one do with the severe licensing restrictions placed
on PC (or any other) software in terms of the number of "copies"
and machines?

Those legal contracts you agree to (usually by opening the
envelope) can, in most cases, be fulfilled if you promise to run
and keep the software on only one machine.

However, what interpretation exists for the "projection" of PC
software onto a multi-user/tasking platform?  E.g., If I have
XDOS, what keeps me from buying PC-WordPerfect, or any other
PC-type software) for about $300 and using this "compiler" to
produce (almost) the same thing as Unix-WordPerfect which sells
for $2000?  Since I "happen" to have a number of PCs using
PC-NFS and Telnet and a Unix workstation, all the PCs in our
department can run this single copy on a single machine all at
the same time!  Think of the savings I could incur by buying
inexpensive PC software: Lotus-123 instead of 20-20
(tongue-in-cheek, of course :-).

It looks as if the term "copies" may need modification to
include those in core/virtual-memory.

-- 

Tom Poage, UCDMC Clinical Engineering, Sacto., CA
ucdavis.ucdavis.edu!sunny!{poage,root,postmaster,news}
ucbvax!ucdavis!sunny!{poage,root,postmaster,news}