DRAFT of license for ancient UNIX sources

Warren Toomey wkt at henry.cs.adfa.oz.au
Thu Feb 26 08:12:16 AEST 1998


In article by Paul McJones:
> Given that "Lions' Commentary on Unix : With Source Code" has been
> published as a book under normal copyright, all the focus on designated
> cpus and audits and such in this draft license seems very heavyweight to
> me.  Does SCO really believe someone is going to start with the 7th
> edition code and evolve it into a commercial offering competitive with
> SCO's latest?

No, what the legal guys have done is take the original v7 license and
alter it enough to keep us happy. This is why there are such hangovers
as designated CPUs. They probably did this to:

	+ minimise the work they had to do, and
	+ prevent a product being licensed under widely different systems

If they created a completely new license, there may be a legal slant:
e.g hey I own an original Western Electric v7 license, and now SCO's 
selling licenses which allow export of code to China (for example).
That's unfair, because my license prevents that. Sue, sue!!

[Maybe I'm just being paranoid here].

Anyway, the CPU restriction is BOGUS. SCO already have a binary license
for v5, v6 and v7 which allows you to run these systems on an UNLIMITED
number of CPUs. I can't see how they are going to enforce the CPU
restriction in the new license.

I think Dion suggested that auditing was probably not going to happen.
Mind you, don't hold him to that!

	Warren

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