| Johnny Billquist <bqt@Update.UU.SE> wrote:
| > Just for your information, this is called software piracy...
| > ULTRIX is a commercial product, even if the owner just have been bought.
| WHO CARES? That bunch of a**holes who call themselves "the U.S. government?"
| F*CK THEM! I don't consider them an authority anyway.

Regardless of your opinion of the US government, I think that the
*owners* of the product in question, i.e., DEC (wholly-owned
subsidiary of Compaq though they now be) might care a little bit.
And whoever legally aquired the CDROM containing Ultrix in the first
place almost certainly had to, in one way or another, agree to respect
that ownership, before opening the package containing the CD.
True, the chances of anyone pursuing prosecution, especially
internationally, might be slim, but some of us see it as a matter
of honour (especially where DEC is concerned; I'm not so personally
uptight about making 5000 copies of an MSDOS boot disk, although I
concede that this is hypocritical of me).

You can argue that since DEC no longer supports Ultrix, they should
open it up in some way, perhaps a cheap/free non-commercial license
like SCO has done, and I would agree.  But AFAIK, they have not
done that yet.

--ben