Dear Antonio,
   
   You wrote:
> The VMS source listings were available as part of the VMS licence up to
> some point.
   
   What?! VMS sources?! Including the code that checks the licenses, so
that one could see how the checksum is computed and generate his/her own
VMS licenses? I'm impressed...
   
> The Ultrix/OSF/Digital Unix listings are also available (I believe) but
> only to those who have the appropriate source licence from whoever doles
> those out these days (not at all cheap, I understand).
   
   That's the exact same UNIX(R) source license that used to be required to
get a legal copy of Berkeley UNIX(R). UNIX(R) was developed and its
licenses were given out by AT&T Bell labs, which has then become UNIX
System Labs (USL). Their licenses used to be around $150000. Since then USL
has been bought first by Novell and then by SCO (Santa Cruz Operation). As
I have said earlier, a person from SCO has told me that if he remembers
correctly, SCO has said "go ahead and distribute those files", and I'm in
the process of negotiating this with SCO right now.
   
> Remember that the listings you want are only available on fiche so you'll
> need access to a fiche reader.
   
   Whaaat?! Fiche?! That sucks... I was thinking about modifying and
reassembling them. Well, maybe not all is lost. I have no idea how the
system ROM is structured, so I'm not dismissing the possibility that the
VMB is sequestered off well enough to allow one to move it from one system
board to another in the binary form.
   
   Sincerely,
   Michael Sokolov
   Phone: 440-449-0299
   ARPA Internet SMTP mail: sokolov@alpha.ces.cwru.edu