[TUHS] Can Ancient Unix be relicensed?

[Warner Losh]

On Wed, Oct 16, 2024, 4:30 PM Anton Shepelev <anton.txt at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello, all.
>
> In 2002, Caldera released Ancient Unix code under Caldera
> license:
>
>    <https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf>
>
> based on the four-clause BSD license:
>
>    <https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-4-Clause.html>
>
> Consequently, it was used by derived projects, such as
> Traditional Vi:
>
>    <https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/>
>
> This proect having been abandoned and orphaned since 2005, I
> wanted to host it on GNU Savanna and there to breath some
> life into it.  Unfortunately, the 4-clause BSD license is
> incompatible with GPL:
>
>    <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD>
>
> The incompatibilty is due entirely to the infamous third
> clause about adverising.  Three years prior to Caldera's
> release of old Unix code, The Berkley Univercity removed
> this clause, producing the GNU-compatible modified BSD
> License:
>
>    <https://opensource.org/license/BSD-3-clause>
>
> They published a notice to that effect on their FTP:
>
>    <ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/README.Impt.License.Change>
>
> Although it has been taken down[1], copies exist all over
> the internet, e.g.:
>
>    <
> https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abbrev/punix/refs/heads/master/README.Impt.License.Change
> >
>
> That said, is there a chance that the copyright holder of
> Ancient Will agree to release a similar note regarding
> everying released under Caldera license?  If there is, whom
> shall I contact about it?  It will benefit everybody using
> Ancient Unix code.
>

That's a complicated question. Does 32V have a valid copyright? Maybe,
maybe not. There is a preliminary ruling suggesting no that effectively
forced AT&T to settle with the Regents, but it was never finalized. There's
good reasons to believe its logic and fact pattern would apply to 7th
edition and maybe 6th.

Putting that aside, there has been a dispute over what copyrights
transferred from Novell to SCO. A judge said no for System V, undermining
SCO's case. But older copyrights weren't explivitly named, but the same
thing: the facts patterns for System V likely applied to older Unix.

So, Novell's assets have been sold 4 times or more. Finding the right
people inside the current company to talk to is hard. It's not their
promary business. It's not clear how many rights they have. It's hard to
show how it could benefit them. And even if you could, another sale might
happen in the mean time.

People have been teying to get even a statement that old SCO legitimately
granted the Ancient license to no avail.

So I'm doubtful. Your best bet is to not make your changes available under
the GPL. They cut against the spirit of 4 clause BSD and step in the middle
of a very old Stallman vs Berkeley dispute from the 4.2 era...

At this point, it's a mess

Warner

____________________
> 1. Why the murrain of FTP servers all over the world?
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20241016/b0bd463c/attachment-0001.htm>