[rescue] MacOS version 8.6

[Tim H.]

On Mon, 12 Aug 2002 18:02:54 -0700 (PDT)
Lionel Peterson <lionel4287 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Seriously, copyright laws do expire if not renewed, and if a product
> is truely EOL, the owner will probably not renew the copyright.

nope, copyright is good for decades, depending on whether it is a person
or a corp. it is good for life of author+75yrs or it is good for ~90yrs
IIRC.  And it keeps on being extended.  I wrote a rant with my opinion
at 
http://www.pellucidar.net/opinion2.html
that has the numbers in it.  Let's just say when the copyright on MacOS9
expires there will be very few machines around to run it on.

And yes this is on topic, because getting old software made available is
of interest to anyone preserving the stuff that is actually too old to
do production work. Stuff like the early PDPs (No Dave, I know PDPs are
still good for production, but when was the last time you put a box with
core memory into use for a paying customer?)

Stuff that was released in the 70s, if the owner of copyright will not
release them, will be unavailable until the '60s, barring further term
extensions.

Patent times are shorter, but still a little long for software IMO

Tim