On Wed, Mar 15, 2023 at 5:03 PM Warren Toomey via TUHS <tuhs(a)tuhs.org> wrote: Probably a good idea. The Ancient UNIX license does not release anything beyond V7 - as the document you have on the site (https://www.tuhs.org/ancient.html) says: 1.9 SUCCESSOR OPERATING SYSTEM means a SCO software offering that is (i) specifically designed for a 16-Bit computer, or (ii) the 32V version, and (iii) specifically excludes UNIX System V and successor operating systems. SVR4 is by definition System V. ᐧ ᐧ

On Wed, Mar 15, 2023, at 2:08 PM, Clem Cole wrote: Do we know with any certainty who currently owns the System V intellectual property? I think (probably) it's now the Canadian company OpenText, who just bought Micro Focus in January, who absorbed the Attachmate Group in 2014, who bought Novell in 2011, who gobbled up USL in 1992... what a tangled web. I don't even know where one would begin trying to track down someone to give permission to archive System V source code. -Seth -- Seth Morabito * Poulsbo, WA * https://loomcom.com/

On Wed, Mar 15, 2023 at 5:22 PM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote: Unlikely, but ... companies are funny about IP rights. A number of us are working on a more general solution that if we can identify the holders of the System V IP might help solve this issue. As my father you to say, "make haste ... slowly." ᐧ

On Wed, Mar 15, 2023 at 5:38 PM KenUnix <ken.unix.guy(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'm not a lawyer - this is not legal advice. This is how I personally analyze these Ancient UNIX license wording against the history of how different UNIX releases we made publically available. *YMMV - get a legal opinion and form your own opinion and make a personal choice.* The Ancient UNIX license -- the document Warren has on the site ( https://www.tuhs.org/ancient.html) says [please go read it yourself]: 1.9 SUCCESSOR OPERATING SYSTEM means a SCO software offering that is (i) specifically designed for a 16-Bit computer, or (ii) the 32V version, and (iii) specifically excludes UNIX System V and successor operating systems. My take ... - Any UNIX package based on the Research Editions 1-7 and 32V is allowed. This family includes the16-bit 1BSD, 2BSD, 2.9-11BSD and 32V based 3BSD, 4BSD, 4.1BSD, 4.2BSD, 4.3BSD and 4.4BSD. - PWB1.0 and 2.0 are 16-bit - although PWB 2.0 was not officially released outside of the Bell System (except possibly for the note suggested about Wollongong advertising they had it). But under the 16-bit rule - I interpret both PWB 1.0 and 2.0 as being covered. - PWB 3.0 (*a.k.a.* System III) was released for both PDP-11 and Vaxen and was thus generally available to the Unix (source) licensees. Under the 16-bit rule, I would *personally interpret* that PWB 3.0 is covered since it is not explicitly called out (as System V is called out). - This also puts PWB 4.0 in an interesting place. Like PWB 2.0, it was never released outside of the Bell System; although Bell folks had 16-bit versions, they were starting to be depreciated in favor of Vaxen and WE32000/3B-based ISAs. Given the exclusion starts at System V and *there was a 16-bit version* for PWB 4.0 internally, again, I personally *suspect it's okay*, but get your own legal opinion, please. - Clearly, anything* no matter the *ISA any release is based on System V, SVR1, SVR2, SVR3, SVR4, and SVR5 has been excluded in that license, which means unless the current IP owners of System V-based UNIX make a new license, I personally interpret that as a no-no according to this license. Some other random thoughts.. - Some of the commercial UNIXs (as described by Charlie WRT to Dell), have encumberments beyond AT&Ts - say IP from MIPs whose compiler was often used and was not based on the AT&T IP and Transcript or PostScript, which came from Adobe. For instance, besides Dell, DEC, HP, IBM's versions have these types of IP issues in Ultrix/HPUX/AIX. I *suspect *many if not most commercial UNIX released would be in the same situation - particularly given Charlie example of Dell who was making a 'Wintel' release. - IBM, HP, and Sun all bought out their UNIX license from AT&T at some point and owned the right to do whatever they wanted with it. And as has been discussed here, a version of Solaris which had SVR4 code in it was released by Sun and later taken back in by Oracle. Some questions for your lawyers would be: 1. If Solaris was released, doesn't that make at least the bits from that release available forever? Clearly, some people on this list have made that interpretation - I'm personally not willing to take that risk. 2. Assume 1 seems to mean that the Solaris IP from that release is free to be examined and used since it was partly based on SVR4, does that make SVR4 available also? *i.e.* it does not matter what the owners of the SVR4 IP think, Sun legally released it with their license? To me, this gets back to the USL vs. BSDi/UCB case ok what was what, and the question is how to show some portion of the code base was or want not released by Sun and what parts had been. Again, I personally will not take that risk. ᐧ

On Thu, 16 Mar 2023, Charles H. Sauer (he/him) wrote: <snip> I'm surprised, given I *know* the code's in there, that the Regents of the University of California aren't mentioned. Then again... -uso.

I'm interested for certain versions of the Portable C Compiler, and maybe non-GNU implementations of other utilities, I'd like to license the source. I'm aware of the re-booted PCC, but I prefer the authentic versions. On 03/15/2023 02:22 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:

On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 08:56:23AM +1100, steve jenkin wrote: Yeah, if there are commercial users of that source base someone will think there is money in and you might as well give up. If there are no commercial users of that source base, you have a chance that nobody cares.

I think the real risk is not measured in dollars, but potential damage to reputations, ill will, the perception that it's not legal or kosher, etc. So I completely understand this well-founded caution. However if anyone was interested in approaching the license holders and seeing if licenses could be obtained or purchased, I'm interested in that. On 03/15/2023 04:30 PM, Warner Losh wrote:

All you need is one person who can claim (or show) that they are a copyright holder to serve TUHS with a DMCA take-down, and kiss this group goodbye.

On Wed, 15 Mar 2023, Rich Salz wrote: Call me naïve, but how would a foreign law be enforced in Australia? -- Dave

[replying to list only; and yeah, I've probably developed a COFF here] At 2023-03-16T20:33:27-0400, Rich Salz wrote: The Berne Convention on Copyright from 1886(!) is very far from the last word on these sorts of questions. As I understand it, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) superseded the Berne Convention in multiple respects and was in force from after World War II until 1995. In 1995, it was superseded by the Uruguay Round Agreements. Also in 1995, the TRIPS agreement came into force, and the Doha Declaration later modified some of the provisions of TRIPS. The headline item was a gesture in the direction of suspension of patent enforcement for life-saving medications. This is back when the cost of anti-retroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS was a bad look for pharmaceutical companies that wanted to charge more than the average sub-Saharan African country's GDP for medicine in sufficient quantity to address the needs of their populations. These trade agreements are like bills in the U.S. Congress; they are not topically controlled, and all kinds of riders and codicils gets stuck into them all the time. A popular theme of these was an upward ratched on copyright durations. In the name of "harmonization", the length of copyright monopolies was always extended to the longest of any member country. The copyright cartels would then go back to their home country legislatures (this was often the U.S.), get a copyright term extension act passed, then impose that on the rest of the world via trade agreements. I recommend Jessica Litman's book _Digital Copyright_ for background on this stuff. It is available for free download.[2] It could also badly use a second edition. My personal opinion is that if a copyright holder wants to "get you", they can, in most countries of the world. As ever, an important question is whether it costs more to "get you" than they can extract from you even if they give you a complete thrashing in court. My surmise is that copyright holders figured this out at some point prior to 1897, which is when the first _criminal_ copyright statute was passed in the United States.[3] Apparently the perceived problem back then was the unlicensed performance (presumably of plays, songs, and other musical forms). The advent of audio and visual recording, and of the mimeograph machine at about the same time, seems to have shifted the concerns of copyright holders significantly (especially for music licensing). Whether these technologies directly precipitated the extension of copyright terms in 1909 (to 28 years, renewable for a total of 56 years), I'd be curious to learn. Regards, Branden [1] https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/intel2_e.htm [2] https://repository.law.umich.edu/books/1/ [3] Prior to this, copyright enforcement in the U.S. was wholly a matter for the civil courts. Where, in my opinion, it should have remained. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_copyright_law_in_the_United_States

[replying only to list] At 2023-03-17T01:05:56+0000, segaloco via TUHS wrote: Indeed not. For any publicly traded company, and not a few privately held ones, the _only_ ethical principle is, as the cryptocurrency aficionados say, "number go up!" (increase the share price). This is speculative. I think the lengthy and expensive SCO v. IBM case established a (rebuttable) presumption that much of what we call Unix, at least those parts that the Berkeley CSRG didn't replace or tidy up, is an orphaned work.[1] For purposes of copyright litigation, IBM had (and has) all the money in the world, and SCOX(E) had nearly all the money in the world thanks to underwriting (by Microsoft and others) who saw the potential for extracting royalties from every Linux installation in every data center in the world. I would also point out that fair use _is_ "playing within the lines". Researching copyright title would appear to be a costly process, at least for a work like Unix System V, which had many corporate contributors, some of which are now defunct or whose status is unknown, and whose legal successors-in-interest cannot be identified, let alone for paperwork sufficient to clarify copyright ownership (for just one aspect of what may have been a diversified business), located. Think like a corporation: are you going to send off a team of senior engineers and attorneys to research this stuff for jollies? For however long it takes? What's the ROI? If you're the director-level person issuing this decree, you can expect to be challenged to justify yourself to your Vice President at every quarterly meeting. Who is going to say "yes" to that sort of project? I'm sorry, but this view strikes me as cowardly. Even granting the existing copyright regime all the legitimacy in the world, I think the evidence that the Unix System V copyrights have been responsibly stewarded is meager. Simply taking the System V sources and using them in commercial product, without source disclosure, is, I think, the most _likely_ means of agitating any potential copyright holders into assembling sufficient documentation to substantiate a claim of copyright ownership to a standard that wouldn't be laughed out of court. But I will grant that that could be perceived as a rude and uncooperative. If one concealed their provenance, it would rightly be considered unethical as well. Consequently, putting the Unix System V sources up as the historical and educational resource that the history of operating systems research and development unquestionably establishes them to be, _is_ the gentle, polite approach calibrated to elicit cooperation from friendly hands inside firms that may be involved, given that is apparently too costly for any one of these firms to slap up a web page saying, "yup, it's ours, and here's the proof!", without exposing themselves to unfriendly attention from the Federal Trade Commission for false dealing. Getting a DMCA takedown notice would not, I am sure, be pleasant, but it happens all the time and as far as I can tell it does not ruin lives or even, of itself, cost people money. That said, I wouldn't embark on the project without competent legal assistance that is prepared to file a counter-notice, to discourage the issue of a BS takedown notice.[2] The whole point is to build a documentary record we can have some confidence in, for scholarly purposes among others. But scholarly purposes don't suffice to motivate anyone who has, or thinks they might have, the rights to Unix System V, or they would have told us already. If we want to find out who really has the rights to this stuff, we've got to give them a reason to find out whether they do and announce themselves. As noted above, we've got to give them a reason to say "yes", even if it comes with a "no": "yes, this is mine, and here is how I know, and no, you can't do what you're doing". And that means posing a question that share price-sensitive executives are willing to find the answer to. If you want my prediction, I don't think anyone will do anything. The answer to the question will not be uttered, but will resemble this. "We believe this asset has no commercial value. We don't know if we own it or not, and finding out would cost money we're not willing to spend." If I'm right, we'll be waiting a long time for that takedown notice. Regards, Branden [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_work [2] Again, I'm not a lawyer, but my half-educated guess is that either the original takedown notice itself, if sufficiently clear, or any response to a counter-notice, would have to sufficiently clearly allege ownership of Unix System V copyrights that if the allegations were false, they would constitute "slander of title", which is one of the torts upon which the SCO v. IBM case turned. So it would still accomplish our mission: if someone steps forward falsely claiming copyright ownership of the code, they open themselves up to liability to those firm(s) that actually do. And if the true title-holders take the BS title-holders to court over it, we get our question answered then, too. If the lawsuit is profitable, then it's not inconceivable that we will establish the exact sort of friendly relationship with the true title-holders that you are afraid of jeopardizing. Because anyone willing to issue a DMCA takedown notice--to a zero-profit bunch of old geeks with a web page--falsely claiming ownership of Unix System V copyrights is, I suspect, already making these fraudulent claims in private communications to firms who are paying them license fees. Why? Because why does any corporation do anything? For the money. This is one way we could go from being bold to being bona fide. A bit of courage could bring benefits for all except fraudsters.

At 2023-03-17T14:17:34+1100, Dave Horsfall wrote: Apparently there is; reply-all seems to have become the norm over the past 20 years. I used to rail against it but I gave up. Now it seems some people (mainly younger people, perhaps) regard it as rude if I _don't_ CC them on mailing replies. Maybe they fear being ignored or circumvented in decision processes. Years ago, the header "Mail-Followup-To" was developed as a convention to get this under control.[1] Maybe because the maintainers of GMail, Outlook, and other web email portals that provided spam filtering services, found themselves with better things to do than support it, we arrived where we are today. :( Regards, Branden [1] https://cr.yp.to/proto/replyto.html

I just hit whatever reply button I wind up hitting, usually reply all. End of the day, it's just words on a screen, if I have to skip past a few emails here and there due to random Cc lists, whatever, I'm not sorting physical junk mail, it all goes away when I turn off the screen. - Matt G. ------- Original Message ------- On Friday, March 17th, 2023 at 8:12 AM, Pete Turnbull &lt;pete(a)dunnington.plus.com&gt; wrote:

Having taken my daily troll pill, I am forced to ask, where is 'Reply-to-the-right-folks'? On Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 17:41 Steve Nickolas &lt;usotsuki(a)buric.co&gt; wrote:

Well if I can help, please let me know. On 03/15/2023 06:15 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:

On Wed, 15 Mar 2023, Larry McVoy wrote: I hope not; SysVile was corporatised Unix... -- Dave

On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 07:03:25AM +1000, Warren Toomey via TUHS wrote: All, thanks to you all for the feedback here on the list and in your private e-mails. I haven't answered most of you. I'm keen to see what sort of arrangement the Open SIMH people can work out in the long term. For now, I'm going to remain conservative and choose to not host SysV on the tuhs.org site. The source is available elsewhere for those that want to peruse it. And on the Unix Tree (https://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree) there is a PDP-11 version of SysV and a snapshot of OpenSolaris which is SysV-derived. As always, I have a write-only "hidden" Unix Archive with a bunch of stuff that I can't put up in the main Unix Archive for legal and copyright reasons. If you have material that falls into this category and you'd like an off-site backup, feel free to contact me. Cheers, Warren