BillW%sri-kl@sri-unix.UUCP (06/09/83)
From: William "Chops" Westfield <BillW@sri-kl> An interesting problem comes up with some of the newer multi-cpu machines, and with simulators running on large mainframes. Here many users are accessing the same piece of software, and you might expect the people who sell it it become upset. However, this does not seem to be the case. Someone from FEL industries talked about their z80 simulator for TOPS-20 at DECUS last month, and I specifically asked about this issue. Furthermore, THEY had also investigate this. What it turns out is that all of the software distributers they had talked to did not seem to mind at all. For example, Digital Research didnt care that there might be 100 users using a single copy of CP/M. I suspect that this may change as multi-user boxes and distributed computing becomes more common (DEC, for example, isnt sure how to reslove licensing issues in their newly anounced VAX Cluster system). BillW