[SunHELP] SunHELP Status Update

[microcode at zoho.com]

I missed Mark's original so I am going on what Andrew quoted: 
On Sun, Dec 02, 2012 at 10:24:16AM -0500, Sandwich Maker wrote: > " 
From: Mark Benson <markbenson at mac.com> > "  > " [] > "  > "  > " Sadly 
due to Oracle's general ignorance and poor attitude, my Ultra > " 60 and
SS20 lie dormant 
I'll be interested to make a deal with you on your SS20 if I ever get 
the money. Don't wait up for me though :-(  
> , for hobbyist purposes, in favour of DEC and > " HP Itanium gear that
I can legally run OpenVMS on for free with a > " Hobbyist license, even 
as an emulation on consumer hardware. 
Ok, but re-upping every year on OpenVMS...really...is that necessary? 
Come on, HP. 
> " personally tend to feel that if Oracle are giving us the middle 
finger > " we ought to do the same to their copyright guidelines but I 
appreciate > " a community site can't operate on that basis for legal 
reasons. It > " appears HP still get it (albeit under duress from a very
active > " community), IBM do too 
What? IBM doesn't get it. They've run FLEX-ES out of business. They have
been threatening Hercules with lawsuits for years. It goes on and on. 
Those of us in the IBM world would love to be able to run current 
hobbyist systems. Some people even have IBM hardware and can't license 
anything to run on it. IBM has been making sure new OS releases need new
microcode support, that's how they sell hardware, and plenty of 
it...there is nothing available to the hobbyist except for stuff from 
around 1974 that a few guys were able to nail down. It was apparently 
not copyrighted at the time anyway, not like IBM actually gave away 
anything they didn't give away back in the 1970s. It's great vintage 
stuff, but nobody is going to learn on that and be able to understand 
today's environment. It's pure reminiscing. 
>, so why not Oracle? 
Run old Sun-entitlements. That's what I do. If it ain't broke... 
> well, there is openindiana...  though it won't help your ss20. 
OpenBSD should run nicely on it. I have an OpenBSD SPARC machine running
under QEMU (I have only UltrSPARC boxes so far, no SPARCS). 
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