Canonical answer about getting v6 & v7 source

Firstly, welcome to some new members of the old unix mailing list. If you don't get this email, please let me know ;-) I received an email back from Dennis Ritchie about getting a v6/v7 license (for those who don't have one). Here is his full reply: From: Dennis Ritchie To: Warren Toomey Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 00:40:55 EST Subject: canonical answer about Sixth and Seventh Edition So far as I can determine, AT&T doesn't think it has the right to issue new licenses for any Unix editions, and won't do so. Several years ago, the Unix IP was transferred to Unix Systems Laboratories, at first as a mostly-owned subsidiary; USL was then sold to Novell, and recently Novell agreed to sell its Unix business to SCO (and HP is partially involved). As of the end of October 1995 this last sale had not been consummated. In other words, AT&T is out of the Unix business, and has been for some time; any licenses will have to come from the current owner. But the "current owner" is itself in flux, and I doubt that even before the latest sale, Novell was quite geared up to issue Seventh Edition licenses; I have no useful suggestions about how to obtain one officially (it might be interesting to try). Official sources in AT&T have said that they have no objection to reissuance of Lions's commentaries and source publication of the Sixth Edition. Dennis So it doesn't look like good news at the moment; I guess we could approach SCO and HP, and ask about trying to get licenses from them. I'll see what I can do. A few other people mentioned that they would like to get stuff from the archive of early Unixes that I'm maintaining, and how to prove that they have a license. I have no idea how to do this, any suggestions? P.S There isn't a Sixth Edition in the archive as yet, can anyone send me a distribution or bootable disk image? Cheers all, Warren Toomey