TUHS

tuhs@tuhs.org

12 participants
6534 discussions

Unix 7th Questions August 2008

by H.J. Thomassen

Hi all, I just discovered this list & decided to join. In August 2008 a thread was started by 'zmkm' where he asked (among other things) for a "unix assembler manual" by DMR. I could post a scan on line if somebody is still interested. It's a 12 page text and the CPU involved is -of course- DEC PDP-11. Plse let me know. Regards -- Hendrik-Jan Thomassen <hjt(a)ATComputing.nl>

16 years, 4 months

Lisa Xenix

by Jason Stevens

Wow I'm surprised a few hours googleing about and I got it running.... I found this 'idle' emulator ("Incomplete Draft of a Lisa Emulator" http://sourceforge.net/projects/idle-lisa-emu ), which can infact run Xenix! It also says it can run the uniplus SYSV (so says the readme).. Searching around I found the following site: http://unixsadm.blogspot.com/2007/12/xenix-blast-from-past-looking-back-at.… which has Xenix 3.0 disk images in the DART format... which as luck would have it idle cannot mount. However I found another lisa emulator, lisaem ( http://www.sunder.net/ ) which has a tool to convert the disks from DART to DC42 (disk copy 4.2). So it was a simple matter of converting the disks lisafsh-tool.exe "Xenix OS Boot Floppy" quit ... etc etc... Then firing up idle, setting the CPU to max speed, and booting up... whenver I was going to answer a question I toggled it back to 5Mhz.. otherwise it would take FOREVER to boot... lol like the 'good old days'. Once the boot floppy had formatted the 5mb hard disk image, and transfered on reboot I had to tell the bootloader to boot from the profile disk.. pf(0,0)xenix And away it went. After installing the OS & the C compiler I'm left with 23 blocks free!.. which I guess for a 5mb disk, is pretty cool.. Anyways there are assorted Xenix PDF's which can be found here http://www.tenox.tc/docs/ Namely these two for Apple Lisa Xenix.. http://www.tenox.tc/docs/apple_lisa_xenix_programmers_guide.pdf http://www.tenox.tc/docs/apple_lisa_xenix_programmers_reference.pdf It's amazing that lisa emulators were sort of capable of running Lisa Office System, now they can run the old unix stuff... it's still impressive.

16 years, 5 months

Xenix

by Lorenzo Gatti

Hello from Italy! I'm interested in Xenix copyright. Do someone of you know who exactly owns Xenix? According to Wikipedia, Microsoft gave everything to SCO, but did they gave also the copyright for the non-x86 versions? I'm asking this because I'm interested in "saving" Xenix from fading into the digital night. If everything belongs to SCO, then maybe an "binary only, non-commercial hobbyst license" could *eventually* be released, at least for older or non-x86 products Best regards, Lorenzo PS: First mailing list post ever. I'm definitely a newbie, here :)

16 years, 5 months

Re: [TUHS] Xenix

by Jason Stevens

Yeah that's the extent of it. trust me I was shocked when I tried to dd a Xenix install, and Qemu booted it right up. But without a C compiler it's useless. I should add that the TCP/IP supported like 3 NIC's... so even *if* you could find it..... it'd be limited. You can get the disk to work though.... But not under Qemu, Virtual PC and VMWare can use it. The 'issue' is that simply Xenix's method of detecting disk density doesn't work under any emulator because while it's trying the wrong thing it will 'work' when it shouldnt... if you are trying to load a 3 1/5" high density disk, the device is 2/60 Low density is 2/36 so change the device for fd0 to be either.... or even symlink it. For what it's worth, running it under Virtual PC is fast, however the console is kind of screwed up.. Xenix uses a nonstandard screen mode (well for virtual pc's bios that is). I used to have Microsoft Word for Xenix... in the box and everything. I'll be dammed if I know where it is. I wish I had managed to keep the license cards.... :| And no, outside of a picture from an ad talking about the PDP-11 version of Xenix, and one anicdote in USENET saying that any issues they had were traced back to Microsoft additions to the system... there is no trace of it. But then who knows, maybe someone will post back with something. On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 1:08 PM, Lorenzo Gatti <gattilorenz(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I know they won't release anything, but asking is never a bad thing. > I saw the lisa and tandy versions, thank you. What I'm searching is > the PDP-11 one, > and I doubt I will find it easily. Do any of you have it? > BTW, even the x86 version is not working well in emulators. > Well, at least you cannot install it, but if you have a dd image of a > working xenix system, this will boot fine in bochs/qemu. > But you won't be able to use disks (at least images, never tried the > real disks) to install new software, lol. > So it's basically a closed system, if you don't connect it to another > xenix (virtual?) machine via virtual serial port. > > 2009/2/10 Jason Stevens <neozeed(a)gmail.com>: >> I doubt SCO/Microsoft will release anything.. but then you never know. >> Do you have Xenix for the PDP-11? I've seen the lisa & Tandy 68000 >> floating around, but both used some custom MMU so that cut out >> emulators... lol I haven't even bothered asking for source, as I >> figured these v6/v7 things are basically lost in the mists of time... >> but then there is v6/v7 for the Pdp-11/Interdata 32b & the recent port >> of v7 to the i386 http://nordier.com/v7x86/index.html >

16 years, 5 months

historical users and groups

by Jeremy C. Reed

Trying to understand some users and groups that continue to exist on BSD systems. Can someone please point me to references or share examples of historical and/or recent uses of the following users and groups? Also any clarifications of my understandings below would be appreciated. (My context is BSD. I know some of these may have different old and existing uses on other systems.) daemon user I see /var/msgs on NetBSD is owned by daemon. msgs will abort if doing -c (cleanup) if not root or daemon user. I guess that is historic. I don't see any daemon user usage. operator user I understand that historically, the operator user had logins for those doing disk backups (via its login group privileges). I understand the operator group, just wondering if any recent uses of operator user. bin user Don't know what uses it. daemon group I understand that historically, these are for processes needing less privileges than the wheel group. Also historically, programs using /var/spool directories were setgid daemon. Anything common other than LPD/LPR still use the daemon group? sys group I understand that historically, the sys group was used for access to the kernel (/sys?) sources. (I don't know if that was just read or was for writing too.) Anyone still use "sys" group? (I guess this is like wsrc which sometimes I manually setup and use for writing to src directories.) bin group I understand that historically, used as the group for system binaries, but commonly the wheel group is used instead. Some third-party software, like OpenOffice.org, install files owned by the bin group. staff group How would this differ from wheel or operators? Any recent systems actually have default use of this? guest group Any recent systems actually have default use of this? nobody group versus nogroup group What is the significance of having both of these groups? Thanks!

16 years, 5 months

Re: [TUHS] historical users and groups

by Robert Harker

My knowledge comes from my early days at Sun in 84-85 as a rock-n-roll roadie turned into a UNIX sysadmin. It was passed to me as I was learning how to take care of trade show Sun Workstations. So take it with a grain of salt. > daemon user daemon was for daemon processes that ran in the background but did not want to run as root. I believe it was used by inetd when it spawned a process but an not sure. It was also used by sendmail when it gave up its SUID root privileges. > operator user operator was a normal user that had privilege to read the raw file systems through group membership. Sysadmins who did backups would also be a member of this group. The group I recall in the early days was "kmem" although now there is a separate group "disk". > bin user A user to go with group bin. Typically would be the "proper" owner of all the binaries and libraries on a system. It has lingered on for far to long because, IMHO, the vendors had no clue as to why everything was owned by bin and just kept it that way since "thats the way it's always been". > bin group I was told that group bin came from UCB to allow semi-trusted staff to replace binaries in the file system without giving them the root password. > staff group My recollection is that staff was for group read/write permissions for home directories, separate from group wheel which granted extra privileges > nobody group versus nogroup group The nobody group was a group to go with the nobody user introduced with NFS. nogroup may have been someone's attempt to make the name more obvious, or it may have been for non-privileged account. But the second case weakens the protection of a non-privileged account

16 years, 5 months

/usr/bin/bs on HPUX?

by Lord Doomicus

I was poking around an HP UX system at work today, and noticed a command I've never noticed before ... /usr/bin/bs. I'm sure it's been there for a long time, even though I've been an HPUX admin for more than a decade, sometimes I'm just blind ... but anyway .... I tried to search on google ... it looks like only HPUX, AIX, and Maybe AU/X has it. Seems to be some kind of pseudo BASIC like interpreter. Anyone ever use it for anything? Has anyone even noticed it before? I'll have to boot my Crimson to see if IRIX has it. - Derrik Derrik Walker v2.0, RHCE lorddoomicus(a)mac.com http://www.doomd.net "There's nothing nice about Steve Jobs and there's nothing evil about Bill Gates." -- Chuck Peddle, MOS 6502 Chip Designer

16 years, 6 months

[pups] 2.11BSD Patch 446+447; fixes for ulrem,umount,tar,tcsh,ps,vmstat,apropos,pstat,rk

by Walter F. Mueller

A note to all 2.11bsd users: Over the past 2 years several bug fixes for 2.11BSD accumulated, and over xmas break I finally found the time to communicate them to Steven Schultz. Steven was so kind to package them into two new patch files 446 issued December 27, 2008 447 issued December 31, 2008 Together, the patches address the following points - ulrem.s: the unsigned long modulo operator (%) was broken in libkern - umount: returned inverted exit codes (1 for success, 0 for failure) - tar: core dumped when a whole /usr tree was archived - tcsh: the time buildin function printed some erroneous or zero statistics - ps: core dumped when '-t' option was used with no further argument - apropos: core dumped when 2 or more arguments were given - vmstat: wrong normalization for some fields - several issues around the rk disk driver - no rk root attach function - no rk BOOTDEV support - incorrect UCB_METER code (vmstat/iostat never showed any rk activity) - autoconfig left the RK11 controller in an error state - pstat: added additional options to access more kernel data structures - new -c option, dumping the coremap - new -m option, dumping the ub_map (UNIBUS map) - new -b option, dumping the buffer pool table - change -s output, gives now full table dump - adapt the info's displayed by -T - some documentation corrections (vmstat, pstat, tcsh) Note: In case you wonder, as I did, why 211BSD survived 20 years with a broken unsigned long % operator: - only the non-FPP libkern implementation was affected - the kernel simply doesn't have any unsigned long modulo's :) - apparently only standalone mkfs after patch 434 was compromised For the full story of all the above consult the header of the patch files. The patch files are available from moe.2bsd.com and ftp.wx.gd-ais.com. Note, that Steven changed the packaging some time ago, the patches are now packed in bzip'ed tarballs in groups of ten patches. So you'll have to look into ftp://moe.2bsd.com/pub/2.11BSD/440-447.tar.bz2 ftp://ftp.wx.gd-ais.com/pub/2.11BSD/440-447.tar.bz2 With best regards, Walter Mueller

16 years, 6 months

AncientFS ported to Linux and FreeBSD

by Warren Toomey

Guys, Amit wrote in: http://www.osxbook.com/blog/2008/12/22/ancientfs-on-linux-and-freebsd/ By popular demand, I've "ported" AncientFS to Linux and FreeBSD. Cheers & Merry Xmas to you all, Warren

16 years, 6 months

Old UNIX Filesystems with FUSE

by Warren Toomey

http://osxbook.com/software/ancientfs/ Amit Singh has added support for a whole bunch of early UNIX filesystem and archive formats to FUSE. Cheers, Warren

16 years, 6 months

Re: [TUHS] Old UNIX Systems with netb (was Filesystems with FUSE)

by Norman Wilson

John Cowan: "Cannot yet" is good. Is there any hope of seeing the 10th Edition emerge from the shadows, ever? ======= Unless some energetic person skilled at nudging people in a friendly way takes on the cause, probably not. Even were Novell to release the source code to System V, that wouldn't of itself make 10/e open, since there's plenty in the latter system that differs substantially from the former--all the really interesting bits, in fact. As has been discussed here at some point in the past, someone would have to get (updated list of players) Novell, AT&T, and Alcatel all to agree to the release. The good news is that that would probably mostly require getting Novell to agree that there's nothing in the system worth protecting for commercial reasons, and the others just to officially say what is already likely true, that they don't care. The bad news is that that is probably substantial work, as he who talked what was then SCO into a hobbyist-source-license for 7/e and predecessors knows well. But Warren has already gone far beyond the call in his work (and cannot be thanked enough, so herewith I thank him yet again); and I'm old and tired and was never really good at talking to corporate types anyway; and in my humble but correct opinion, it is the combination of energy and dedication and ability to talk cheerfully to corporate times and to persist without losing either hope or patience or cordiality that is needed. That has always been a rare combination. If someone thinks he or she has the requisite skills and wants to have a go, I'll be glad to offer what little help I can, and I'm sure Warren likewise. But somehow I wonder whether it will actually happen before the world ends on 2038 January 18. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

16 years, 6 months

Re: [TUHS] Old UNIX Filesystems with FUSE

by Norman Wilson

John Cowan: > Does this depend heavily on OS X, or should it work on Linux and BSD as well? Warren Krun Toomey: No idea. I had a brief look at some of the code on the web site and it seems relatively neutral, but I have not downloaded it yet. I've sent an e-mail with the same question to Amit. ====== I keep meaning to poke about at FUSE, since it plays more or less the role of the file-server-implementation library setup I wrote for my own purposes 20 years ago (in the context of a UNIX variant that cannot yet be distributed freely). But I'd be surprised if the stuff was terribly MacOS X dependent. Certainly FUSE exists in Linux, and the libraries and requisite kernel module are even included in some Linux distributions (notably recent editions of Fedora), because sshfs is built atop FUSE. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

16 years, 6 months

/usr/bin/bs on HPUX?

by Jose R. Valverde

Bit of digging: > 1. "bs" was written at AT&T, probably at the Labs, at some time between > the release of 32V and System III. It was part of both System III and > at least some System V releases. And of course it is in TUHS! Remember we have 32V and SIII. For example, look into TUHS/Other/Distributions/Plexis_Sys3/ or TUHS/PDP-11/Distributions/usdl/SysIII/ The sources contain 'bs' under cmd/bs The latter one (under USDL) contains also the man page under usr/src/man/man1 (as 'bs.1'). So, there. You have it. This leads me to consider we would greatly benefit from an expanded and indexed TUHS repository tree. I made one on my mirror long ago, but a series of disk crashes ended with it. Maybe, if there is interest I could do it again. j -- EMBnet/CNB Scientific Computing Service Solving all your computer needs for Scientific Research. http://bioportal.cnb.csic.es http://www.es.embnet.org

16 years, 6 months

[pups] PDP-11 / vacuum tube interface

by Ross Tucker

Dear all, (This has got to be the strangest cross-post I've ever done.) I have just taken a bet from a friend to challenge my geekiness. I was telling him about my love of Vintage Technology and he proposed that I combine two hitherto separate hobbies and see what happens. The topics: the DEC PDP-11 minicomputer (vintage: 1970s) and vacuum-tube ham radios (vintage: 1960s). I do sincerely apologize for cross-posting, but I am rather younger than either of these technologies (vintage: 1984) and this seems like a monumental challenge. My question for y'all: how could I possibly design+build a project that uses both of these technologies? My thought is to port some radio receiver Digital Signal Processing (DSP) application into PDP-11 assembler, compile and run it via emulator on my PC, then use it with the vacuum-tube regenerative receiver that I built a few years ago... Does anybody know if PDP-11 UNIXes even had the capability for a "sound card"? Or, to get ambitious, I would LOVE to design some interface circuitry between PDP-11 digital circuitry and vacuum-tube electronics... The challenges are legion: the tube side of the circuit operates around 350V DC levels with radio-frequency (RF) signals at 7 MHz (almost the clock rate of some PDP-11s!) and I don't have the DEC Handbooks, but I'm pretty sure that even those ancient pre-TTL circuits operate below 350V! So... any, er, "ideas"? Best regards, Ross Tucker

16 years, 7 months

[pups] V7 boot tape files

by Brantley Coile

Hey there, I have two questions. First, does anyone have the original files from the Seventh Edition boot tape? Second, does simh support tape operations like writing file markers? No doubt you can see where I'm headed with this. I want to attach the original boot tape and install the original V7 tape onto simh. Thanks, Brantley Coile

16 years, 7 months

Re: [pups] PDP-11 / vacuum tube interface

by Fred N. van Kempen

I was bored, and ported my version of SimH (which is an older version, but with some stuff ripped out, and other stuff put in) to my operating system for my ARM-based MCU board. It now "acts" like a regular 11/83 when turned on, and will happily boot Ultrix-11 off the CF card :) Not as fast as running on a peecee, not half as much fun as running a real '11, but hey, it DOES fit into my backpack. --f -----Original Message----- From: pups-bounces(a)minnie.tuhs.org [mailto:pups-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org] On Behalf Of Jochen Kunz Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 6:15 PM To: pups(a)minnie.tuhs.org Subject: Re: [pups] PDP-11 / vacuum tube interface On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:09:34 +0100 "Fred N. van Kempen" <fred.van.kempen(a)microwalt.nl> wrote: > smiling @ his nano-11 system running Ultrix, all the size of > a matchbox.. nano-11? Please elaborate. -- tschüß, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ _______________________________________________ PUPS mailing list PUPS(a)minnie.tuhs.org https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/pups

16 years, 7 months

Re: [pups] PDP-11 / vacuum tube interface

by Fred N. van Kempen

> (This has got to be the strangest cross-post I've ever done.) You've got that right :P > I do sincerely apologize for > cross-posting, but I am rather younger than either of these > technologies (vintage: 1984) and this seems like a monumental > challenge. Well, several projects can be thought off in this scenario, but if you want to keep it mildly useful, try to do something with audio tubes connected to an '11 (OK, here's a spoiler: "you'll make a PDP11-driven music player using a tube-based audio backend"), or such. You could go into analog computing as well, but that can be kinda hairy. This more or less only requires building a usable D/A converter on the '11, which then interfaces to the tubes. I'd use a DMA- based 16-bit DA controller. Cheers, Fred (smiling @ his nano-11 system running Ultrix, all the size of a matchbox..)

16 years, 7 months

Re: [pups] PDP-11 / vacuum tube interface

by Jay Jaeger

Back in the 1970's Paul Pierce used a D/A converter on a PDP-11 at the UW Computer Systems Lab to generate music much like early PC sound cards did -- by combining harmonics in various ratios. Although he happened to have used RT-11, there is no reason why it could not be done under Unix. (The UW Computer Systems Lab also had a Votrax). So, sure, you could, with an A/D and D/A converter do something like that. I am not sure that the various emulators have done emulation for A/D or D/A, but in principle, it ought to be possible. AC coupling (via a capacitor) of the input or output would remove any concerns about the relatively high DC voltages. Besides, input signals ordinarily come into the grids of vacuum tube circuits by way of a transformer. Ditto for outputs from tube circuits. Jay Jaeger At 05:37 PM 12/9/2008 -0800, Carl Lowenstein wrote: >On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 4:00 PM, Ross Tucker <rjtucke(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Dear all, > > (This has got to be the strangest cross-post I've ever done.) > > > > I have just taken a bet from a friend to challenge my geekiness. I was > > telling him about my love of Vintage Technology and he proposed that I > > combine two hitherto separate hobbies and see what happens. The > > topics: the DEC PDP-11 minicomputer (vintage: 1970s) and vacuum-tube > > ham radios (vintage: 1960s). I do sincerely apologize for > > cross-posting, but I am rather younger than either of these > > technologies (vintage: 1984) and this seems like a monumental > > challenge. > > > > My question for y'all: how could I possibly design+build a project > > that uses both of these technologies? My thought is to port some radio > > receiver Digital Signal Processing (DSP) application into PDP-11 > > assembler, compile and run it via emulator on my PC, then use it with > > the vacuum-tube regenerative receiver that I built a few years ago... > > Does anybody know if PDP-11 UNIXes even had the capability for a > > "sound card"? > >Well, you could look at "Votrax" on Wikipedia. Allegedly, the first >words spoken by a Unix system at Bell Labs, using its Votrax >synthesizer, were "file not found". > >Things that are now known as "sound cards" were called A:D and D:A >converters back in those days. And there were a fair variety of them >available for both Unibus and Qbus systems. > > > Or, to get ambitious, I would LOVE to design some > > interface circuitry between PDP-11 digital circuitry and vacuum-tube > > electronics... The challenges are legion: the tube side of the circuit > > operates around 350V DC levels with radio-frequency (RF) signals at 7 > > MHz (almost the clock rate of some PDP-11s!) and I don't have the DEC > > Handbooks, but I'm pretty sure that even those ancient pre-TTL > > circuits operate below 350V! > >The vacuum-tube circuits may be running from 350 VDC but somewhere >there are low-level inputs from which everything is amplified. Think >microphone. > > carl >-- > carl lowenstein marine physical lab u.c. san diego > clowenstein(a)ucsd.edu >_______________________________________________ >PUPS mailing list >PUPS(a)minnie.tuhs.org >https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/pups --- Jay R. Jaeger The Computer Collection cube1(a)charter.net

16 years, 7 months

Finding homes for old machines (in the UK)

by Tim Bradshaw

Sorry, this is a bit off-topic, but I'm not sure of anywhere better to ask. I used to have a number of HLH Orion machines, which were superminis (they ran BSD 4.2 / 4.3) made in the UK in the 80s and very early 90s. A friend of mine still has some, which I suspect may be the last ones extant, and a mass of documentation & media for them. He's retiring soon and needs to find homes for them. I think they're historically reasonably interesting machines - I suspect they may have been almost the last significant British computer design, and the earlier model was quite an interesting machine, with user-programmable microcode &c (the later model was, I think, not so interesting, if a lot faster). Does anyone know of any museum-type places which might be able to offer them a home? They are still working (we think, he needs to turn them on). I'm thinking of approaching the Bletchley Park people, but I'm wondering if anyone here has any better leads. Thanks! --tim

16 years, 8 months

Phil added you as a friend on Reunion.com!

by Phil Garcia

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16 years, 8 months

unix seventh questions

by zmkm zmkm

Hi all the v7 rl02 dsk from archive , seems to be missing the /usr/sys , any ideas on how to restore it ? , also in the v7 as man page , there's reference to “unix assembler manual” by DMR , which I tried to locate without luck , the only thing available is the assembler reference manual , in v7 manual volume 2 , is it by any chance same documents under different name ? . thanks in advance for the help zmkm _________________________________________________________________ Get more from your digital life. Find out how. http://www.windowslive.com/default.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Home2_082008

16 years, 11 months

SysIII for the Vax

by Jose R. Valverde

About one year ago I found installation tapes for System III for the VAX somewhere on the Net. Unfortunately I can't find the original URL on disk any longer, neither on my bookmarks and a Google search does not find anything now. The distribution is available as tap archives, and you can find it on ftp://ftp.es.embnet.org/pub/misc/os/UNIX/sysIII As four files. My questions are: - as this is the only copy I can find now on the Net, would it make sense to save it also on TUHS and mirrors? - the tap tools do not seem to recognize contents (dtp seems to identify the first file) and I am currently too busy to further investigate. Could someone with spare time have a look at them? - a strings of tape1/set1 seems to reveal that it only supports an RP06 at NEXUS 8 and a TE16 at NEXUS 9. Could someone with more time have a try at them using SIMH? Thanks. j -- These opinions are mine and only mine. Hey man, I saw them first! José R. Valverde De nada sirve la Inteligencia Artificial cuando falta la Natural

16 years, 11 months

Re: [TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

by Michael Davidson

Jose R. Valverde wrote: I don't believe anybody sane would engage in deceptive action at that level consciously with such big players as IBM. From all the history of the cases it seems rather that this is a case of a change of management to unknowledgeable, ambitious managers who paid too much attention to the UNIX department on the Company and then had to put a straight face to defend what resulted to be an untenable position. I am not going to comment on Darl's sanity. I think that you will find that Darl's problem was paying too little attention to the people who actually understood what was going on, not paying too much attention. He certainly didn't appear to pay much attention to this: http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/IBM-459-22.pdf Try to put yourself in Darl's place: you make a decision based on the promises of some head of department and sue IBM and the world. Then little by little your move is proven wrong. What can you do? Yes, say sorry, close the company, fire all workers and get punished for admitting to a scam. Or you can put a straight face, defend that you do actually believe the unbelievable -and look as a stupid instead- and try to save the company, the workers and your skin until you can find someone else to take the hot potato. I think that it was more a case of suing IBM and the world based on what you (at the time) sincerely believed and hoped *must* have happened, and then spending several years and legal theories unsuccessfully trying to find any evidence for it. Don't let your bad experience with Microsoft spread to all vendors. Some have managed a long history of delivering on their promises, and Caldera at the time was one such. Personally, I think if they had stuck to Ransom Love and endured the harsh times for a couple of years until the "boom" of Linux they would have managed a lot better. Not to mention they could have unified UNIX at last. But there's no way to know now. One promise that, at the time, Caldera had never delivered on was making a profit. Caldera did some good things in the Linux world but they were a distinctly second tier player. Their decision to buy SCO' s UNIX business was a bad one, based largely on emotion not on good business sense (I know this, because I was one of the people that helped sell it to them). At the time Caldera had no revenue stream but still had some cash from their IPO, SCO had a rapidly declining revenue stream, and bunch of mostly 10 to 15 year old technology which was still in reasonable shape but which wasn't going anywhere. Somehow (with SCO's help) Ransom Love convinced himself that the deal made sense and that (most important of all, because it appealed to his ego) he could succeed where everyone else had failed and somehow unite UNIX and Linux and build a successful business out of it. Sadly none of that turned out to be true and, had Ransom Love stayed as CEO I suspect that the company would have been out of business by the end of 2003 at the latest. md

16 years, 11 months

Re: [TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

by Pepe

> From: "Jose R. Valverde" <jrvalverde(a)cnb.csic.es> > > Following up to recent questions about whether OpenSolaris might be jeopardized > if SCO didn't have the rights to provide the license, I see that judge Kimball > has ruled on the case, and in discussing its ruling, he mentions the agreement > between SCO and Sun. > > Particularly he mentions: > > > Section 10 of the 2003 Sun Agreement also sets forth SCO's obligation > > to indemnify Sun for any claim brought against Sun asserting that the > > Section 4 licensed technology infringes the rights of any third parties. > > Section 10 further provides that if the intellectual property rights > > in the technology become the subject of a claim of infringement, SCO > > shall ensure that Sun has the right to continue to use the technology > > or replace the technology to make it non-infringing. The provision has > > not been implicated or applied. > > I have to change my opinion on SCO to consider them now UNIX zealots. As > I read it, I guess Sun was worried by possibly non-ATT code in SVRX, and > may be by Novell's assertions, so they shielded themselves: if I'm not > wrong that means OpenSolaris is safe and the responsibility for that relies > totally on SCO. You guess Sun was worried about non-ATT code in SVRX? No quite. The SVRX code in Solaris (if any; and certainly there is plenty) is certainly 100% ATT-derived, and any non-ATT code in the SVRX code that The SCO Group passed on to Sun had (by a mere matter of time) to be added to SVRX after ATT relinquished the original SVRX code and quite after Solaris branched out of the UNIX System V Release 4, and therefore any non-ATT (or non-ATT-licenseable) code inside The SCO Group's SVRX certainly is not inside Solaris, so no worries there. You forget the The SCO Group was fully engaged in a total FUD campaign, whose ultimate goal was to cut off Linux support in the Enterprise via fear, uncertainty and doubt, and whose collateral goal was to make plenty of money selling bogus Linux licenses and suing everybody in sight (IBM and The SCO Group's own customers, of course). Sun needed desperately to find a way to stop losing money, and that meant making themselves again desirable to the IT market. Sun mayor rivals were (and are) Microsoft and Linux. Specially Linux, since more Sun machines are being replaced by Linux than by Windows. So the Sun strategy was two-fold: release an "opensource" Unix to "steal" the grassroots support away from Linux, and give money to The SCO Group so they could keep afloat their FUD campaign against Linux in the Enterprise. If they could achieve these two goals with one swift move, much better; and they did: the gave money to The SCO Group to buy a bogus license to opensource Solaris. > SCO thus was willing to take any risks regarding third parties with respect > to opening up SVRX derived Solaris. That was very bold and valiant Your ingenuity here is shocking. > My guess is they were for opening SVRX as a way to increase market share > of UNIX against LINUX but preferred Sun to open _their_ version instead of > opening SCO's own. At the same time they must have thought that a combined > attack on Linux would drive most people off Linux towards opensource UNIX > and that corporate interests would prefer SCO's closed Unixware to Sun's > open source solution in line with tradition. Ridiculous. With Solaris the Enterprise has a growth path to big iron. With UnixWare the Enterprise has a "growth" path from the PC to a bigger PC. > Thus SCO move benefits them twice as now they have two open source OSes, > and should any contributor to SVRX code complain of the open sourcing > SCO would have to take the blame and has already assumed all > responsibility. So, what two "opens source" OSes does The SCO Group have? "Open"-Server and "Open"-Unix (aka Unixware)? Amazing! > BTW, nobody seems to have complained about portions of SVRX contributed > code being in opensolaris, so maybe nobody cared anyway Nobody cares about OpenSolaris. If you are going to go with Solaris, open or not, you are going to be paying much more for year-on-year support to the vendor than the Solaris license costs, so whether it is open o not is moot for the Enterprise. > In any case, we > now know SCO has assumed the defense of OpenSolaris, which is a great > thing to know. I do not see it like that at all. The SCO Group has afforded SUN indemnification in the eventual case the license they sold to them gets shot, as it is going to happen unless Novell gets its money, either from the now-bankrupt The SCO Group or from SUN itself (second payment for the same thing, funny deal there!). The question here is: the indemnification The SCO Group offered SUN weights less than smoke: What indemnification can you get from a bankrupt company? None, that is the answer. > Or may be they didn't want to but needed so badly Sun's money to follow > their lawsuit against IBM that they were willing to sell their souls > (and IP) in the hope of a big win against IBM. Who knows? That interpretation is much closer to the truth. Except they didn't sell "their IP", as The SCO Group had none of UNIX copyrights, none of UNIX IP, they just bought from Novell the UNIX distribution business, but not the UNIX IP. > One thing is certain, Caldera/SCO should be thanked for allowing opening > of so much ancient -and modern- UNIX source code. Their war against Linux > OTOH is another issue. Caldera/The SCO Group did no have just title to change the license on the intellectual property they did not own and which they were not allowed to re-license with different terms under the "Assets Purchase Agreement" signed between Caldera and Novell. Therefore, any and all relicensing done by Caldera of ancient or modern UNIX code is void and null. Unless Novell comes after the fact and endorses such open-sourcing. Absent Novell action, The SCO Group actions changing the UNIX license are void. Novell action in that sense has not happened up to the day of today. > From: "Gregg C Levine" <hansolofalcon(a)worldnet.att.net> > > It would not have impacted any version of Solaris, including the Open one. > And why you are asking? I am glad you asked. It seems that according to the > good people at the Sun offices here in the City, that by the time version 9 > was released, that the code base was completely rewritten, and contains > absolutely nothing from BSD, and most certainly nothing from the original > creators of UNIX. That's not saying much. The original creators of UNIX wrote it in assembly for the PDP-11. Nothing of that is in Solaris, that's true. And BSD is open-source and legally close-able anytime, so no argument there either. Now, if "the good people at the Sun offices" are trying to imply there in no Unix System V code in Solaris, they are lying. Period. > From: Boyd Lynn Gerber <gerberb(a)zenez.com> > > Caldera/SCO was trying to get everything opensourced. They released > OpenUNIX 8.0 which was UnixWare 7.1.2. What? Care to show proof? What do you mean by the mention of "OpenUNIX" in the same paragraph where you say "SCO was trying to get everything opensourced"? That "OpenUNIX" is proof of the "opensourcing" done at The SCO Group? What?? > They had reached an agreement with > every one and were about to release everything a the big expo in Jan/Feb > east cost. It was to be a joint IBM/SCO announcement, when IBM suddenly > decided against it and were addamanly now doing everything to stop it. Those are not verifiable facts. Rumors and hearsay make no history. > I am grateful to SCO for their attempt to make UnixWare/OpenUNIX > opensource. I just wish it had succedded. What attempts? Vaporware is nothing to be grateful about. -- Pepe pepe(a)naleco.com

16 years, 11 months

IANAL. Kimball has ruled

by Jose R. Valverde

Following up to recent questions about whether OpenSolaris might be jeopardized if SCO didn't have the rights to provide the license, I see that judge Kimball has ruled on the case, and in discussing its ruling, he mentions the agreement between SCO and Sun. Particularly he mentions: > Section 10 of the 2003 Sun Agreement also sets forth SCO's obligation > to indemnify Sun for any claim brought against Sun asserting that the > Section 4 licensed technology infringes the rights of any third parties. > Section 10 further provides that if the intellectual property rights > in the technology become the subject of a claim of infringement, SCO > shall ensure that Sun has the right to continue to use the technology > or replace the technology to make it non-infringing. The provision has > not been implicated or applied. I have to change my opinion on SCO to consider them now UNIX zealots. As I read it, I guess Sun was worried by possibly non-ATT code in SVRX, and may be by Novell's assertions, so they shielded themselves: if I'm not wrong that means OpenSolaris is safe and the responsibility for that relies totally on SCO. SCO thus was willing to take any risks regarding third parties with respect to opening up SVRX derived Solaris. That was very bold and valiant (though seeminglymay be wrong) from them. Why they decided to allow open sourcing via Sun instead of Unixware is their choice. I guess they thought it would play better for them to sell a 'closed' Unixware as an 'enhanced' or 'better product' than open solaris. It also fits within Caldera's previous opening other ancient UNIX. My guess is they were for opening SVRX as a way to increase market share of UNIX against LINUX but preferred Sun to open _their_ version instead of opening SCO's own. At the same time they must have thought that a combined attack on Linux would drive most people off Linux towards opensource UNIX and that corporate interests would prefer SCO's closed Unixware to Sun's open source solution in line with tradition. But then comes the last sentence: the issue of opensolaris damage to the closedness of SVRX was not brought up at trial. May be it wasn't the time and place, or may be Novell reasoned that it does not matter to them to offer one open source system (linux) or other (solaris). I'd also guess given Novell involvement in SuSE that they would have liked to open SVRX all along but didn't dare to because of possible complains by existing licensees (like IBM or HP) who might see their licenses as oblivious, and -most probably- because it was never very clear whether all code could be open or belonged to them (sort of like Linux going to GPL3: it's difficult to identify all contributors and ask their permission). Thus SCO move benefits them twice as now they have two open source OSes, and should any contributor to SVRX code complain of the open sourcing SCO would have to take the blame and has already assumed all responsibility. BTW, nobody seems to have complained about portions of SVRX contributed code being in opensolaris, so maybe nobody cared anyway, but it might also be that they were waiting to see the case unravel. In any case, we now know SCO has assumed the defense of OpenSolaris, which is a great thing to know. My kudos to SCO. They were bolder than I thought. Even if -IMHO- their strategy against Linux was misled, their willingness to support open solaris deserves respect. Or may be they didn't want to but needed so badly Sun's money to follow their lawsuit against IBM that they were willing to sell their souls (and IP) in the hope of a big win against IBM. Who knows? One thing is certain, Caldera/SCO should be thanked for allowing opening of so much ancient -and modern- UNIX source code. Their war against Linux OTOH is another issue. j -- These opinions are mine and only mine. Hey man, I saw them first! José R. Valverde De nada sirve la Inteligencia Artificial cuando falta la Natural

16 years, 11 months

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