On Wed, Jun 19, 2024 at 12:00 PM Al Kossow <aek@bitsavers.org> wrote:
On 6/19/24 8:47 AM, Clem Cole wrote:

> That's how I remember Otis Wilson explaining it to us as commercial licensees at a licensing meeting in the early 1980s.
> We had finally completed the PWB 3.0 license to replace the V7 commercial license (AT&T would rename this System III - but we knew it as PWB
> 3.) during the negociations   Summit had already moved on to the next version - PWB 4.0.  IMO: Otis was not ready to start that process again.

Is the really early history of Unix licensing documented anywhere?
Not to my knowledge -- I probably know much/most of it as I lived it as part of a couple of the negotiation teams.

The work on reviving a Plexus P20 prompted me to put up the history of Onyx and Plexus at
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/plexus/history and a long time ago someone who worked at Fortune
told me we can all thank Onyx in 1980 for working out the single machine licensing with AT&T
Hmm, I'm not sure —but I don't think it is wholly clear—although Onyx was early and certainly would have been a part.  They were not the only firm that wanted redistribution rights.

Numerous vendors asked for the V7 redistribution license, with HP (Fred Clegg), Microsoft (Bob Greenberg/Bill Gates), and Tektronix (me) being three, I am aware. It is quite possible Onyx signed the original V7 license first, but I know there was great unhappiness with the terms that AT&T initially set up. When the folks from AT&T Patents and Licensing (Al Arms at that point) talked to us individually, it was sort of "this is what we are offering"  - mind you, this all started >>pre-Judge Green<< and the concept of negotiation was somewhat one-sided as AT&T was not allowed in the computer business.

There was also a bit of gnashing of teeth as PWB 2.0 was not on the price list.  At the time, Al's position was they could license the research, but since AT&T was not in the commercial computer business, anything done for the operation companies (i.e., USG output) was not allowed to be discussed.

The desire to redistribute UNIX (particularly on microprocessors) came up at one of the earlier Asilomar Microprocessor workshops (which just held its 50th in April, BTW).    Prof Dennis Allison of Stanford was consulting for most of us at the time and recognized we had a common problem.  He set up a meeting for the approx 10 firms, introduced us, and left us alone.  Thus began the meetings at Ricky's Hyatt (of which I was a part).  This all eventually begat the replacement license for what would be PWB 3.0.   

I've mentioned those meetings a few times in this forum. As I said, it was the only time I was ever in a small meeting with Gates. When we were discussing the price for binary copies, starting at $5K and getting down to $1K seemed reasonable for a $25K-$125K computer, which was most of our price points.   Microsoft wanted to pay $25/copy.   He said to the rest of us, "You guys don't get it. The only thing that matters is volume."