Chris wrote...

I still think a lot of this discussion comes down to whether
electronics designers (who, after all, are being paid to create
intellectual property) are just trying to skate around the necessity of
paying for somebody else's intellectual property, which has admitted
value. Otherwise, why would we be having this discussion at all?

I disagree, we're not talking about manuals that can still be
purchased from HP / Agilent. (And by this I mean real manuals,
not microfiche dups that can't be used at the workbench.) We're
talking about the real shortage of manuals for old instruments,
where more manuals than instruments have been thrown away or lost.


--
Thanks,
- Win