What type of licensing agreements (maybe informal) were used for the
early INGRES tape distributions? I am trying to see if they were an
example for BSD or how compared with early BSD.
The BSD-style licenses were not introduced until 1987 and later
(starting in but not completed in 4.3BSD-Tahoe). But various earlier BSD
(distribution) components did have open source licenses long before that
-- such as Eric Allman's trek (circa 1977) in 1BSD and MIT's X
components (1985) shipped with 4.3BSD.
The COPYRIGHT for INGRES 6.3/-1 (February 1, 1981) source shipped with
2.79BSD (Febuary 1981) indicated it was not open source: "... may not be
reproduced or disclosed without the prior written permission of the
owner."
My BSD history book in progress has at least 15+ pages of examples and
commentary and interview quotes about the history of proprietary and
open source licensing in early BSDs. I also plan to research the
history of licensing for W and early X.