[Simh] ka655/ka655x + copyright/licensing issues

[Vince Mulhollon]

On Wed, Aug 29, 2007 at 02:41:04PM +0200, Peter Lund wrote:
> 2) Debian/Ubuntu ships a crippled version of simh because they
> intentionally remove the firmware because they believe the copyright and
> license situation is unclear.  Is there anything we can tell them to
> make them feel that it's safe to not excise the firmware?
> 
> -Peter

Yup that "them" is me, AKA vlm at debian.org.  Ubuntu is just a derivative 
of Debian with more marketing money, so I assume they're pulling my 
file, I've not checked, and don't much care about that.  So it's really 
just me, not "them" or those two organizations.

As far as all this "belief" and "feelings" stuff goes, thats for holiday
cards and valentines day gifts... copyrights and licenses have to be
handled with legal logic (oxymoron ?).  No one would be more happy than
me to include the microcode, but I have no idea what kind of copyright label 
might be physically silk screened on the eproms, don't know the date the 
eprom was burned relative to the era of mandatory software copyright, 
its all about as cloudy and vague as can be.  If you're not perfectly
comfortable with the possibility of explaining it in court, then it's not 
clear enough.

Also "crippled simh" is a bit harsh since 32 of the 33 emulated machines 
work just fine.

I periodically bring this topic up, nothing heard but the crickets...