Talk:Hercules emulator

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Are all those older IBM operating systems "public domain"? VM/CMS certainly is not, to pick an example. Is there some other phrase or word we could use here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by BBCWatcher (talk • contribs)

Why are they not? They were published in the US before 1978, without any copyright notice. IBM considers that public domain. I'm not going to argue with them. Jay Maynard 16:05, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

The term "VM/CMS" is probably too generic.. VM/370 was available at no charge.. The others (VM/SEPP, VM/BSEPP, VM/SP, VM/HPO, VMXA/SF VMXA/SP, VM/ESA, z/VM) which can still be referred to as *VM/CMS* are For charge Licensed System Products.--Ivan Scott Warren 01:38, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I changed VM/CMS to VM/370. Jay Maynard 15:17, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Do you know of any IBM documents that say anything about IBM's view of this matter? You say "IBM considers that public domain," and I presume they must have indicated this to Hercules developers in some way. It would be helpful if we could find something that could be cited. There is a great deal of conflicting opinion about what constitutes public domain (and much of it is no doubt wrong). Trevor Hanson 17:57, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I would dearly love to be able to put my hands on documentation to that effect. Unfortunately, that's not likely to happen. I spoke to one of IBM's intellectual property lawyers in Poughkeepsie a few years ago by phone, and he told me that IBM considers anything they published before 1978 witout a copyright statement to be in the public domain - but he would not put that in writing for me. At one time, Rick Fochtman, the guy who first distributed OS/360 on CD-ROM, did have a letter stating that OS/360 was in the public domain and he could freely distribute it, but he was not able to lay hands on it when I asked him for a copy. Jay Maynard 18:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, yes I guess you would. :) This is not surprising on IBM's part of course. It must all mean that this is de facto public domain software, but that IBM hasn't made an official release or declaration to that effect; they are either saying "what we did has probably caused it to become public domain" or "we could prove we still own it but there's no advantage in making a fuss". This may also explain why there is such divided opinion about the status and use of source code distribution "back then". At the time, though, I'll bet that source code use was governed by licensing terms. (All those sites were under NDAs anyway.) Well, at your leisure, see if my current description of source code distribution in this section now agrees with your understanding. Trevor Hanson 19:25, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

That description works for me. As for the public-domainness of older OSes, my discussions with both IBM and other intellectual property lawyers convinced me that anything published in the US before 1978 without an explicit copyright claim was, in fact, public domain in the legal sense and not just the de facto sense. I believe IBM made their non-program product OSes public domain at least in part because of the ongiong antitrust lawsuit; I don't know if it was required by the consent decree or not, but the fact that their OSes were public domain was something plug-compatible manufacturers such as Amdahl and Magnusson took full advantage of. There were no licensing terms, such as NDAs, involved at all. Jay Maynard 20:04, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Which answers a question I have long had about how the PCMs got access to their OS software. My firsthand experience with Amdahls was at NCSS, where this did not enter into the equation; but I always wondered about the way MVS Amdahl sites got access to the OS. I had assumed that it was licensed separately by IBM directly to the customer as a software license. Your explanation is much more plausible. Thanks for the input. Trevor Hanson 21:16, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Insufficient context?

A {{context}} template was just added, complaining that "The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter." Reading it over, the introduction seems pretty clear to me. What does the editor have in mind? What aspects of the introduction are missing or confusing? Trevor Hanson 11:00, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Hercules-logo.gif

Image:Hercules-logo.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 17:45, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale added. -- Jay Maynard (talk) 15:51, 3 January 2008 (UTC)