Date   : Tue, 05 Oct 2010 09:18:58 +0100 (BST)
From   : kranser@... (Steve Fewell)
Subject: MOS6 - Any programmers want to see a free

> 
> We went through this when Pace owned RISC OS.? The
> general view was that
> Pace's lawyers wouldn't pass the time of day without a 5 or
> 6 figure sum,
> and so any RISC OS effort wouldn't even pay for the
> management time.
> 
> However Castle eventually bought RISC OS, and the ex-Pace
> engineers have
> been good at releasing the source under Castle's shared
> source licence, and
> prodding their contacts at other companies (ANT, ARM etc)
> to get permissions
> for the bits that Castle don't own.
> 
> The trouble is you'd need to find someone in Pace who was
> enthusiastic
> enough to dig through what they have, and have the right
> contacts in the
> legal department.
> 
> The other thing that's been said (this is all from
> newsgroup threads, I have
> no way of verifying it) is that anything not specifically
> assigned belongs
> to Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (as purchaser of Acorn), and
> their records
> were lost in the World Trade Center.? And they're even
> less likely to pass
> the time of day.
> 
> Theo
> 

So basically any ownership either cannot be proved (due to lost records)
or would cost too much to build a legal case to be worthwhile.