Re: [TUHS] Unix on DEC AlphaServer 4000 - TUHS

20 Sep 2020

You're a bit harsh on the developers but I think in most cases it was
the marketing/finance  part of companies which decided on such mundane
matters as licensing.

My 2-1/2 cents.

Cheers,
uncle rubl

...
 Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2020 12:42:39 -0700
From: John Gilmore &lt;gnu(a)toad.com&gt;
To: Clem Cole &lt;clemc(a)ccc.com&gt;
Cc: "Nelson H. F. Beebe" &lt;beebe(a)math.utah.edu&gt;, tuhs
        &lt;tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org&gt;
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Unix on DEC AlphaServer 4000
Message-ID: &lt;32401.1600544559(a)hop.toad.com&gt; 
... snip ...

...
 License managers now count as DRM, under the Digital
Millennium
Copyright Act (though no such laws had been passed when the license
managers were first created).  So: is it worth breaking the law in many
countries, to maintain a historical curiosity? 
...
 Personally, I would throw DRM-encrusted software, and
the hardware that
is dependent on it, into the dustbin of history.  Its creators had fair.
warning that they were making their products unusable after they stopped
caring to maintain them.  They didn't care about their place in history,
nor about their users.  They did it anyway, for short-term profit and to
harass those people foolish enough to be their customers.  Their memes
should not be passed to future generations.  As Sir Walter Scott
suggested in another context, they "doubly dying, shall go down, to the.
vile dust, from whence [they] sprung, unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung". 
        John