[TUHS] Unix on DEC AlphaServer 4000

[John Gilmore]

Nelson H. F. Beebe <beebe at math.utah.edu> wrote:
> We ran DEC OSF/1 until the power supplies on our several Alpha systems
> died, but it had an annual license fee, and the O/S shutdown when the
> license expired.

Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
> The issue is license managers as Nelson says, but Internet search is your
> friend *i.e.* different unlimited time styles license PAKs for Tru64 have
> been reported to have been seen in the wild, however YMMV.

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