I somewhat seriously proposed before compaq finalized the acquisition of 
DEC that we (collectively  the world's DECophiles) bought the company 
ourselves to continue to run it as the supreme computer engienering and 
manufacturing comapny, and to continue UNIX and VMS development and 
marketing, instead of just being a micro$haft reseller. It would have 
been ambitious, but i figured that with proabbly a quarter of a million 
of us out there, most of us professionals with a decent residual income, 
we could have in the aggregate afforded to buy a controlling share of 
DEC. Perhaps form a collector corporation to act as a holding company to 
really own the DEC shres, and we buy sharesin the holding company so that 
our voice had a single overbearing vote as controlling share. ah well.. 
i'd actually be willing to put a bit of money into buying stock in a 
company that takes over the VAX and PDP and UNIX rights and continues
carrying the PDP and VAX lines (and hell, bring back the 36 bit mahcine, 
implemented in very spiffy VLSI!) into the future with implementations in 
the most advanced production technologies! just imagine a VAX implemented 
in the technology that the new AXP's and such are! It'd be incredible! 
Silicon is cheap enough that all the stuff that made thingsliek XMI 
machines so expensive will be shrinkable to a few custom chips! we could 
be a fabless design house, or buy last year's hottest fab equipment for a 
pittance and build them ourselves! 
any takers? :-)

As for UNIX, i dont think SCO would sell it outright, but they could 
certainly make a licensing deal! (hey, i own a source license!) 

isildur

On Thu, 26 Aug 1999, J.S. Havard wrote:

> > 
> > If only I had the money to buy the remnants of Digital back from
> > Compaq... I'd set up shop in The Mill (fly swatters at hand and all) and
> > get back to basics.
> > 
> Why not do it?  I'm sure we could get enough people together to pitch in
> some money to buy parts of dec, and the Vax and PDP architectures.  Let
> compaq keep the Alpha, its not as pure (I sould like a Quake-I biggot).
> 
> Also, while we are at it, let's buy the real Unix source (research, and
> sysV, still allow SCO to use it), and the Unix trademark.  Muahahahaha.
> I'd also bet people would be willing to do that, also.
> 
> Regards,
> John Havard
> Head Geek
> The Seven Sages Project
> 
> 
> PS Don't forget the U.S. mirror of the Vaxarchive has moved!
> vaxarchive.sevensages.org is its new home.
> 
>