I've been given two different interpretations so I'm not sure who to believe. I really would like to hear a lawyer from Oracle (ney Sun) for Micro Focus (ney - At&t -> Novell) make a statement. I believe the issue is that Sun was given something called "complete rights", similar to what IBM had( which is how OSF was licensed - from the IBM one). This was interpreted to believe they could anything with it with anything >>they<< did. That is to say, if they hacked on the kernel and published there kernel, then the parts that came from AT&T could be also. The question is what happens to the code that got from AT&T but did not use. I'm going to be hypothetical here, Larry correct me to the specifics please as I never saw Solaris sources, but SVR4 had Streams Networking in it. Let's say the Solaris pulled that out like we did at Stellar with SVR3 and put a BBN or BSD style stack back in and never shipped the streams code. The Network stack they did publish would be available, but what about the AT&T version? I have heard different legal folks say it was both still "closed" and others say, it was now opened. I don't know. I'm not willing or have I ever worked for anyone that has believed it was now "free." I do tend to think of 32V and before as generally open technology. I come to that between the UCB regents position, one hand, much less the publishing of books like the Lions' book years ago. There have been publications of how things like SVR3 and SVR4 >>worked<< but I don't know of source being included the same way the Lions text. If that were done, I would be more comfortable. That said, I do feel like its time it >>should<< be made available; but the IP is I guess owned by Micro Focus. Clem On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 3:06 PM, Noel Chiappa &lt;jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu&gt; wrote: rights to only it

And since the central Unix source trees have been static - I don't think Novell was much more than a caretaker, correct me if I'm wrong - and the last SysVR4 release of any consequence was Solaris - has Oracle done anything with it? - I think the best thing for all would be the release of the Unix SysV source trees under a suitable open source license.

(I've made a similar argument for the IBM/MS OS/2, DEC VAX VMS, and MS Windows and WinNT 3.x and 4.x source trees on various other Internet forums: the horse has bolted, it's a bit pointless welding shut the barn door now. Better to get the credit for being friendly and open, and clear up some residual bugs while you're at it ... )

Clem Cole &lt;clemc(a)ccc.com&gt; wrote: the kernel Aprox. half of the code from Svr4 was written by Sun anyway. AT&T still believed that they owneed all of the code ans required Sunto pay royalties. Sun for this reason started to negotiate a buy out with AT&T. They agreed that Sun pays 3 years of royalties at once and then gets the same rights as AT&T. Shoirt before the contract was signed, AT&T handed over the code to Novell for less than what Sun should pay to AT&T. Sun then continued the negotiation with Novell and finally did the deal that included the right to sub-license the code to an arbitrary number of customers. Thia was around 1994/1995 and it took Sun Lawyers upt to y2000 to decide that the right to sub-licence includess the right to make it OpenSource. In y2000, Sun published aprox. 95%% of the Solaris-ON code but this did not include the source ls.c because it contained 3 lines from Microsoft/Xenix. It also missed the kernel networking code. specifics streams AFAIK, there never was a streams based networking code in Svr4 from AT&T. The "original" code was from Lachman but it was slow so Sun bought new code from Mentat inc for Solaris 2.3 (IIRC). Sun then soon hired all important people from Mentat and enhanced the code, but missed to buy Mentat itself. As a result, Sun could not OpenSource the Mentat networking code. Fortunately, this code was not fast enough for 1/10 GB ETH and needed a major rewrite anyway. So Sun management did give the OK for the rewrite that finally made it possible to Opensource 99% of Solaris-on in June 2005. Let me finally give some information about SCO.... Sun bought a license from SCO for two reasons: - The permission to use the NIC drivers from SCO. Then it tourned out that that SCO did use something similar but incompatible to the Solaris GLC NIC abstraction layer. - The permission to use "lxrun", but then a group of people inside Sun wrote a new subsystem from scratch and caused the other group to become the looser of an internal dispute. A friend is one of the people who did work for the SCO kernel group before SCO was bought by Caldera Linux and later renamed to SCO... The lawsuit was initiated by the Caldera Linux people and not by the "former" SCO people. He is still working for the company that now owns sco.com and that now redirects to the new company name xinuos.com. They still have the ELF standard documents and AT&T UNIX documentation online. Their business is now FreeBSD based as they did not have the momentum to make UnixWare a 64 bit system. While I implemented Joliet and ISO-9660:1999 support for them, I noticed that the code was not very 64 bit clean in general.... Finally something about the way the code way sold: Novell bought not only the source code and the license but the building and the USL people in New Jersey as well. When they later sold UNIX to SCO, they of course sold the USL location and people as well. IIRC, SCO did even present a contract for that fact but the judge did rather believe the oral claims from the Novell people. While I was implementing Joliet and ISOI-9660:1999 I had to discusss things with the former USL people from New Jersey. Jörg -- EMail:joerg@schily.net (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin joerg.schilling(a)fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/ projects/schilytools/files/

Not be argumentative, but I do not think SCO matters at this point as I'm under the impression that per IBM/SCO case the US courts have ruled - i.e. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118678589019694632 Court Ruling Gives Novell Copyright in Unix System By KEITH J. WINSTEIN and WILLIAM M. BULKELEY Updated Aug. 11, 2007 12:01 a.m. ET A federal court in Utah ruled that Novell Inc., not SCO Group Inc., is the rightful owner of the copyright in the Unix operating system.

On Sun, Mar 5, 2017 at 12:15 PM, Joerg Schilling &lt;schily(a)schily.net&gt; wrote: I'm i.e. the who work in case owner The plain language of the contract that was on groklaw makes it clear that SCO got the rights to sell Unix, but since they didn't offer Novel enough money, the copyrights were specifically not included. SCO could sell and sublicense, but then had to pay Novel royalties back as the copyright holder instead of a larger up-front payment. The judge, correctly in my view, ruled that this was the proper interpretation of the contract. The testimony of the people that negotiated was needed to clear up the issue raised by SCO about the interpretation of the rather specific language in the contract and addenda. This body of evidence was developed rather extensively through both testimony, as well as evidence of payments by SCO to Novel that supported the view that SCO could sell licenses, but had to pay royalties back to Novel. They did this for several years before stopping and embarking on their ill-fated legal battle. So a judge disagrees with you, as a matter of law and fact, that Novel's claims are not credible. They are the ones that won the day, and won the day rather handily. All the details can be found at http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20040319041857760 which includes a large number of exhibits from people that were actually there, who had first-hand knowledge, etc. On the whole it seems quite credible. I know who I believe, given the choice. Warner

Clem Cole &lt;clemc(a)ccc.com&gt; wrote: Novells claims are not very credible.... I mentioned that the USL laboratories from AT&T (including the people who work there) have been handed over from AT&T to Novell and later to SCO. It is most unlikely that these people did not terminate their contract in case the ownership of the code has not been transfered to the respective new owner of the company.

From here (

So once again this doesn't match my memory. I'm done arguing with Joerg, just noting that I don't believe that his information is accurate. It would be nice to get the real info from someone who was at Sun at the time.

On Sun, Mar 05, 2017 at 07:26:23PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote: I wouldn't have to say anything if you did that. I can't remember a single time you were correct when you were talking about Sun history when I was there. Maybe there was such a time but by all the statements I remember you making were way off the mark. As the person who is making claims, the onus is on you to provide references when you are challenged. I don't want to argue with you and I'm not going to. If you want people to believe you, however, you're gonna need to back up your claims with, as you say, verifyable statements.