Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
Dave wrote:
It's a shame there is not a law that allows software to be used freely
after x years of no new updates.

You are welcome to lobby your represntatives to change the copyright
laws.

I do not intend to. But it would seem sensible. If someone has no
intension of selling something any more, it is hard to see what he/she
looses by others having it. Obviously if they sell something similar,
then I can see it would hurt them. But if they simply have given up
selling software like it, then I see no reason it should not be free.

I know Sun Microsystems have been helpful in supplying old software
(SunOs + others) to people that want to use it on old machines. But Cray
were not apparently. And from what I understand, its not as easy to copy
on a Cray.

There are two things wrong with this.

1. Sun has not been helpful supplying SUNOS for old machines, they have
only been less than agressive in enforcing their copyright.

I know of people who have got things from directly from Sun for old
machines.

However you will find that the sites that they have not gone
after are outside the U.S.



They will provide for free download Solaris (SUNOS 5) 8, 9 and 10
for download if you sign up (for free) and accept their restricted
license.

I'm not sure if you can get 8 or 9 now. Perhaps 9, but I've not seen 8.
Must admit I have not looked too hard. I am typing this on a machine
with Solaris 10


Solaris 10 really is excellent value. Use it on any machine, with any
number of CPUs, commercial / hobby / educational, and it costs you $0.00.

I've seriously considered deleting Vista from my laptop and putting
Solaris on that. But I know it will be a pain to get it all working,
drivers etc.

There is an open source version of Solaris 10, however that only supports
the UltraSparc II and later processors.

That is not true. OpenSolaris runs on x86 and x64 hardware. I know that,
as I installed it myself.

Or perhaps you mean it does not support early *SPARC* processors. If so,
I would agree with you.

Solaris 7, which was available for shipping costs, was originaly released
at about $500 and derivative versions (e.g. Tadpole's) were never free.

Yes, I bought 7 myself for shipping costs. Strange thing is I wanted to
buy two copies - one for me, one for someone else. Sun would not allow
me to order two though! Some silly reason - I forget what it was.

Anything older is long gone, and not available from SUN.

I think there are plenty of sources in Sun which will give this sort of
stuff away.


2. What's left of Cray is owned by Sun. After Seymor Cray died, the
company went under and Sun bought them out. SUN produced a line
of "Cray" computers which had SPARC processors in them.

Note that many UNIX vendors had a license from AT&T that required
them to pay AT&T $60 for each workstation (2 or less users) or
$250 per server binary package they sold.



Sun in those days included a RTU "right to use" license for SunOS
when you bought a new computer, but technicaly it was not transferable.




Geoff.