[Elecraft] K rig's longevity?

[David Woolley]

Fred (FL) wrote:
> I'm sure there are computer savvy wizs in the
> Elecraft community - with the ability to

This is illegal in the USA and severely restricted in Europe.  The 
copyright outlasts the company; it is just more difficult to work out 
who owns it.

Also, one of the selling points of the PIC series is that you can 
prevent the program memory being read.  As well as the copyright breach, 
any attempt to get round that in the USA would fall foul of the Digital 
Millenium Copyright Act.

> Heaven forbid - but should the corporate airplane
> go down in a hurricane, with all hands aboard -
> who's to keep the Elecraft firmware alive? Ditto,

This is why I have already suggested that it be put in escrow (which is 
not the same as backup).  Standard escrow arrangements don't protect 
against products being killed for marketing reasons, e.g. after a 
takeover, and only protect customers, not, for example, third party 
suppliers of replacement parts, so a standards escrow may not cover all 
concerns.

> say a unfriendly takeover, by Yaseu, etc.?  Major
> companies, are supposed to worry about such
> rare happenings, for the customers sake.

That normally only happens in business to business environments, where 
the customer is aware of the possibility of escrow and has the market 
power to get it into the contract.  Even then, normal arrangements don't 
protect well against takeovers done to get a competing product off the 
market.

I'm a computer programmer, not a lawyer.

-- 
David Woolley
Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.