On Jul 19, 2006, at 2:11 PM, David Boyes wrote:
Are there any PUT tape with service for non-copyright
software in there. COul they be released.
I only as the VM/370R6 we have is at (I think) L620
but the latest tape we have is 616....
There are service tapes for early releases of VM/370 in the
collection,
but I'd need written permission from IBM to give them to you (or
anyone,
for that matter). Same with TSS source and object, etc, etc. All I
have
permission to do at the moment is preserve anything that's still
readable and transfer it to easier-to-handle media (currently AWSTAPE
files on CD).
Old as these tapes are, they're still covered by the IBM Customer
Agreement, and worse yet, somebody ELSE's (ie, Princeton University)
customer agreement. It's not my decision to make, and I doubt that the
Princeton board of regents is interested in allowing me to decide for
them (or quite frankly, whether they would even understand the
question). You could lobby the IBM archivist, though -- the more
voices,
the more likely they might be to allow it.
Although, prior to VM370R6, at least, system software was not
explicitly copyrighted by IBM, and because it was prior to the US
becoming a signatory to the Berne convention, it is therefore in the
public domain. Exactly what the cutoff *is* has been discussed on
the Hercules list, but I'm pretty sure someone here can summarize.
The short answer is that there is very likely a certain amount of
stuff on those tapes that *is* redistributable, and it's relatively
easy to ascertain what, as it will be materials from before some date
(which I do not know but I'm sure someone will pipe up with the
answer) that lacks an explicit copyright notice.
Adam
