Kinda Sorta Mirror up

abaddon@...

Jul 26, 2001

OK OK it's not a mirror... I've just stuffed a bunch of files - herc
distributions, various OS images, the Fishy GUI etc etc on an ftp
site. It's a cable modem, so it isn't totally unusable - but very
much a backup to the primary sources which have real bandwidth,
should conmicro.cx go AWOL again. I think the only things I have
which are less than widely available are the Linux/390 64-bit stuff
(largely superceded anyway) and an old MVS distribution - think this
is the 'Bekker' one that was circulating a while back.

ftp www.corestore.org
user hercules
password mvs38

ls -l to see everything - most of it is in subdirectories.

No I don't have anonymous FTP running.

Cheers

Mike
(who has been 'on the cusp' of a Software Release Cycle for around 6
months now... a new record. Hence not very visible.)
http://www.corestore.org

9:56 pm

Re: Kinda Sorta Mirror up

somitcw@...

Jul 27, 2001

ftp://hercules:mvs38@www.corestore.org/
does not answer. The system or link must be down.
ping 24.168.1.227 also times out.

If you have the Bekker system, I suggest that you delete it
NOW. It contains for charge products.

--- In hercules-390@y..., abaddon@a... wrote:
>OK OK it's not a mirror... I've just stuffed a bunch of files -
>herc distributions, various OS images, the Fishy GUI etc etc on
>an ftp site. It's a cable modem, so it isn't totally unusable -
>but very much a backup to the primary sources which have real
>bandwidth, should conmicro.cx go AWOL again. I think the only
>things I have which are less than widely available are the
>Linux/390 64-bit stuff (largely superceded anyway) and an old
>MVS distribution - think this is the 'Bekker' one that was
>circulating a while back.
>ftp www.corestore.org
>user hercules
>password mvs38
>ls -l to see everything - most of it is in subdirectories.
>No I don't have anonymous FTP running.
>Cheers
>Mike
>(who has been 'on the cusp' of a Software Release Cycle for
>around 6 months now... a new record. Hence not very visible.)
> http://www.corestore.org

4:59 am

Re: Kinda Sorta Mirror up

abaddon@...

Jul 27, 2001

--- In hercules-390@y..., somitcw@e... wrote:
> ftp://hercules:mvs38@w.../
> does not answer. The system or link must be down.
> ping 24.168.1.227 also times out.

Yep - router died... see my post to Fish. It's up again.

>
> If you have the Bekker system, I suggest that you delete it
> NOW. It contains for charge products.

Ah. Hmmm. I think not. It's nearly twenty years old, it's no longer
available from IBM for ANY price, and it's... nearly twenty years old.

I will NEVER delete twenty year old software - look at how we are
scrabbling around for older releases... DOS etc. Look at the even
worse shape the pdp-10 emulator folks are in - after the DEC software
development group trustingly sent all their tapes to the 'archive' -
which made landfill of them within five years.

Sorry for the rant, but I take a pretty hard line on software
archiving. I appreciate your position but I'll agree to differ on this
occasion :-)

Mike

6:56 am

Re: Kinda Sorta Mirror up

somitcw@...

Jul 28, 2001

--- In hercules-390@y..., abaddon@a... wrote:
>--- In hercules-390@y..., somitcw@e... wrote:
>> ftp://hercules:mvs38@w.../
>>does not answer. The system or link must be down.
>> ping 24.168.1.227 also times out.
>Yep - router died... see my post to Fish. It's up again.
>> If you have the Bekker system, I suggest that you delete it
>>NOW. It contains for charge products.
> Ah. Hmmm. I think not. It's nearly twenty years old, it's no
>longer available from IBM for ANY price, and it's... nearly
>twenty years old.
>I will NEVER delete twenty year old software - look at how we
>are scrabbling around for older releases... DOS etc. Look at
>the even worse shape the pdp-10 emulator folks are in - after
>the DEC software development group trustingly sent all their
>tapes to the 'archive' - which made landfill of them within
>five years.
>Sorry for the rant, but I take a pretty hard line on software
>archiving. I appreciate your position but I'll agree to differ
>on this occasion :-)
>Mike

I understand your position completely.
Where should the line be drawn? Is the old MVS/ESA 5.1.0
okay to redistribute? It hasn't been marketed for years,
but supports much modern hardware and is Y2K compliant.
IBM is probably collecting some money for monthly license
charges from a few customers.

I attempt to stay away from questionable software.
Unless IBM makes some declaration, you should at least mark
the software as questionable so people don't use it without
knowing that it is probably tainted.
i.e. I don't know which file on your site to avoid.

10:08 am

Re: Kinda Sorta Mirror up

Sam Knutson

Jul 28, 2001

At 05:08 PM 7/28/01, you wrote:
>I understand your position completely.
> Where should the line be drawn? Is the old MVS/ESA 5.1.0
> okay to redistribute? It hasn't been marketed for years,
> but supports much modern hardware and is Y2K compliant.
> IBM is probably collecting some money for monthly license
> charges from a few customers.
>
> I attempt to stay away from questionable software.
> Unless IBM makes some declaration, you should at least mark
> the software as questionable so people don't use it without
> knowing that it is probably tainted.
> i.e. I don't know which file on your site to avoid.

Right on and then still perhaps a hair too restrained.

IMHO the greatest threat to the continued development of Hercules is to
encourage or
even tolerate any violations of IBM (or others) intellectual property. Only
by prolonged demonstration that this is not a problem will IBM be
encouraged to believe that a hobbyist or community license for old
materials no longer supported will be adhered too.

The consensus of the group was that the original BB distribution was
poisoned. I will not
link to any site which hosts any software that an educated group has
determined
likely to violate a license even a 20 year old one.

I am still running too low on sleep to provide a lengthy trip report but I
will say at the
last two SHARE meetings the only negative comments about Hercules I heard
related primarily to
this issue.

I don't care what you want or what you think MVS x, MVS/ESA v3, v4, or v5
is worth being unsupported. They are licensed materials. There is no grey
area. If you have a copy and feel the need to archive it for a time when
it may be useful by all means do so but don't redistribute it.

Best Regards,

Sam Knutson
mailto:sam@...
My Home Page http://www.knutson.org
CBT Tape http://www.cbttape.org

10:34 am

Re: Kinda Sorta Mirror up

Fish

Jul 28, 2001

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sam Knutson [mailto:sam@...]
> Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2001 10:34 AM
> To: hercules-390@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [hercules-390] Re: Kinda Sorta Mirror up

<snip>

> [...] They are licensed materials. There is no grey area.

<separated for emphasis>

> If you have a copy and feel the need to
> archive it for a time when it may be useful
> by all means do so but don't redistribute it.

FWIW, I most emphatically agree.

Archive it by all means.

But *don't* give others access to it.

We simply can't afford at this point to jeopardize whatever relationship we may
have with IBM.

--
"Fish" (David B. Trout)
fish@...

5:39 pm

Kinda Sorta Mirror up

Jay Maynard

Jul 29, 2001

Hercules at SHARE

On Sat, Jul 28, 2001 at 05:39:59PM -0700, Fish wrote:
> We simply can't afford at this point to jeopardize whatever relationship we
may
> have with IBM.

Amen.

I had conversations with a few well-known IBM technical types while I was at
SHARE. Two themes were prevalent:

1) Wow! Hercules is REALLY a neat thing, and a great achievement!
2) It'll encourage people to steal IBM intellectual property.

One of the folks was of the opinion that all IBM software was licensed, even
the public domain stuff, and that VM/370 r6 was in fact copyrighted. I think I
convinced him that that was not the case, although I'm not 100 percent sure
of that; when I told him I'd looked where he told me a copyright notice
would be and that there was none there, he maintained that we should still
get a license from IBM for it so people know where they stand. I don't know
that that's either possible or necessary. He did say that he felt a hobbyist
license would be a good thing, and that we'd be more likely to get one for
370-mode stuff than for everything.

This particular IBMer was also of the opinion that Hercules includes
patented and trade secret technologies, and that that shows a lack of
respect for intellectual property. I asked him why I should care if IBM
didn't, and he felt it should be a matter of principle. I think we'll have
to agree to disagree with this one, and at any rate will not worry until IBM
objects. If they should choose to object, they can find me easily.

There was an emulator BOF that I wasn't able to make due to a prior
commitment. The folks from the US distributor for the UMX Virtual Mainframe
Facility were there, as well as Gary Eheman and Len Deitch from IBM (the
guys responsible for the Flex-ES on IBM hardware product). I've heard
several versions of what happened, but just about everyone agrees that it
wasn't as successful as it could have been.

The two presentations I gave went over well, though the second one (on
running classis OSes on Hercules) needs some more work. Sam Knutson gave out
a few hundred copies of Volker's turnkey CD, and I gave one to Cheryl Watson
Walker, mainframe performance guru; it'll be interesting to see what she has
to say. Hercules was mentioned just about every time someone discussed small
systems. We're definitely known in the mainframe world now, and generally in
a positive light.

All in all, it was a good week. I'm looking forward to the next one, next
March in Nashville.

2:49 am