[Simh] TSS-8 and ETOS free-redistribution licenses (PDP-8 operating systems)

[Johnny Billquist]

Hi.

On 2017-01-14 10:06, Warren Young wrote:
> I'm the current maintainer of the PiDP-8/I software project
> <https://tangentsoft.com/pidp8i/wiki?name=Home>. I've been going through
> the files we distribute to make sure we have proper licenses for them
> and have come up short on a few things: the TSS-8 and ETOS disk images.
> I've simply been unable to find any indication online that they were
> ever licensed for free redistribution.
>
> I'm posting here because this list was recommended as a place where
> someone might know whether these OSes were ever formally licensed for
> free redistribution.

Fair enough. This is a good place to find old farts... Be careful what 
you ask for, though. As sometimes the answers might be both complicated, 
and people might get annoyed by youngsters... ;-)

> Since TSS-8 was a DEC product, I'm hoping that it was released under the
> "hobbyist" licenses they offered at some point. I expect I could sign up
> for the current OpenVMS hobbyist license, but I have no interest in
> agreeing to it just to see if it covers this software. Perhaps someone
> who has agreed to it could confirm this guess? The web site seems to
> just talk about VMS, which I have no interest in.

The OpenVMS hobbyist license and program are only targeted at VMS. 
Nothing else have ever been associated with it, so you can immediately 
ignore it for anything related to any DEC machine with the name "PDP" 
somewhere in it.

That said, I am pretty sure that DEC did release OS/8 at some point. 
However, I have no recollection of ever seeing DEC say anything about 
TSS/8. So I suspect you might be out of luck, unless someone knows of 
any generic release done of PDP-8 software from DEC.

> As for ETOS, that wasn't a DEC product, so I have no better guess for
> where to go trying to find a license for it other than web search
> engines, and I've already struck out there.

I do not believe it was ever released by its owners. And since you need 
special hardware on real machines, there was never much demand from 
anyone to even try to get it released, as it was normally that if you 
had the hardware, you also had the software.
So I think you're out of luck on that one too.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol