[Simh] OpenVMS Hobbyist Program

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2020-03-08 13:33, Dan Gahlinger wrote:
> You're probably "safe" to do so if you're in a country that is not part 
> of The Berne Convention, YMMV.

Probably not. The Berne convention makes copyright automatic on work. A 
country that have not signed the Berne convention does not make 
copyright non-existent in that country. It only means that whoever 
wanted to have a recognized copyright needed to maybe explicitly 
register for it. However, I would bet that if that was needed, DEC did 
that paperwork already a long time ago. So it's protected pretty much 
everywhere.

The US had not signed the Berne convention when VMS was introduced...

> But again this exposes an age-old issue regarding "abandonware".

Indeed. Except in this case it's even less of "abandoned". VMS is still 
in active development. It's just that they stopped supporting a specific 
hardware platform. So they abandoned some hardware.

> Will the Vax VMS copyright therefore expire in 2046?
> eg 25 years after the license expires.

Very unlikely. Copyright is usually until 70 years (currently) after the 
authors death. However, when copyrights are held by corporations, it can 
be difficult to talk about the authors death. But for sure it will not 
be before 70 years of initial publication. Which for VMS would then be 
in 2047.
The expiration of the license definitely have no bearing here.

The US extended the period when it got close to the time when Disney 
copyrights would expire, so chances are it will get extended again 
soon... :-)

> We need a hobbyist member with massive pockets to step up and protect it 
> for all of us...

Please. :-)

   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