On Wed, Sep 11, 2019 at 2:11 PM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:

The problem was that Sun was in financial hot water and AT&T wanted SVR4
to be the industry standard. ... It would have been
much better if Sun had licensed their source base to AT&T and then
AT&T could have leveraged the industry standard.

I think those two statements say everything. Sun was not in a position to negotiate and AT&T desperately wanted SVR4 to be the standard - I think it was corporate pride. (which I also think was mixed up the BSDi/UCB case too - if they had let it go it would have been a darned site smarter).

If AT&T could have swallowed and excepted somebody other than them having the 'high order bit' it might have worked. As you say, leveraged the industry standard. Instead is just added to the fighting.