On Thu, 29 Jan 1998, Ben Ketcham wrote:

> | 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.

before opening the package, have witnesses to watch as you stamp or 
write "Without Prejudice" or "Under Protest" on the license text or the seal.
That's how we protect ourselves from 'adhesion contracts' which these 
agreements are.

> 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).

	I would have to disagree. Recently the US government withheld aid
from Israel to extradict a murder suspect to stand trial in Maryland. 
Export licenses would have been next if they did not yield. 

> 
> 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.
> 

Before we get carried away in this thread, the whole purpose is to get 
these machines supported by using an OS that does not have this 
commercialisation attached therewith. Would that be one of the main 
goals of NetBSD?

Boot, Run, Compile and Compute with a Clear Conscience ;-)

P.S.A