On Thursday, 10/05/2006 at 05:15 EST, Dave de Noronha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I have just obtained a P390 and a copy of z/VM 3.1 from a company that > purchased the licence a long time ago. As I now own the licence and it is > now unsupported can I run it on Hercules ?
** Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, though I have watched a lot of lawyers on TV. But I don't think that counts. ** No, and I'm sorry to say that I don't believe you aren't licensed to run it on the P390, either. z/VM 3.1 is licensed under the terms of the IBM Customer Agreement (ICA) and is non-transferrable. "A long time ago" doesn't matter. If the company you got the P390 and software from did not notify IBM that they were discontinuing its use, they are still getting billed and you are running it as *their* agent. Their license with IBM makes them responsible for what you do with the software. If they *did* notify IBM, then they were supposed to destroy it, not give it away (this is in the license). When an ICA license is discontinued, your rights to use the product are terminated. z/VM V4 and V5 are licensed under different terms and conditions (IPLA, the International Program License Agreement) that do allow a transfer of your Proof of Entitlement to a 3rd party as long as a Service and Support agreement is *not* in effect. Unlike ICA, you can continue to run the product forever as long as you don't transfer it to someone else, and you don't owe us additional money unless you add another CPU. If you transfer it to someone else, *they* get to run it forever and you have to stop. This really gets into some legal issues that can't be readily resolved here in the list and I'm not qualified (or allowed) to give you legal advice. I just read the license agreements and the above is an unofficial interpretation of what I read. You can read them, too, at http://www-304.ibm.com/jct03004c/businesscenter/cpe/download0/21508/ica.pdf. Note that this is for the United States only. I don't know where the country-specific ICAs are located. Anyone interested in the IPLA agreements (base and product-specific Licence Information Documents) can read those at http://www-03.ibm.com/software/sla/sladb.nsf. Country-specific differences are included. They aren't particularly long, nor are they written in legalese. Alan Altmark Speaking for himself
