2 Apr
2021
2 Apr
'21
4:02 p.m.
On 2021 Apr 2, 04:26, arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
Steve Nickolas <usotsuki(a)buric.co> wrote:
The source for ancient/research UNIX is out of the bag. An unclouded licence
to freely use it, that is quite another thing. If Caldera/TSG didn't own the
copyright for UNIX, and Novell did (and that has indeed been asserted by a
judge in court), then Caldera/TSG had no title to relicense that source.
In fact, it seems that SCO/Caldera/TSG just bought from Novell the "Unix
business" without the UNIX copyrights, and in that vein Old-SCO had a
contract with Novell to collect the UNIX royalties and then to pay said
royalties to Novell keeping a cut of them "for the collecting services".
So the key point here is "unclouded license". Look what is happening now to
IBM because their matter with Caldera/TSG still had clouds of doubt about
it.
I have the suspicion that if Caldera/TSG/XinuOS is allowed to exist, they
will use all and any cloud of doubt to drag to court any UNIX user who
happens to have plenty of money and lacks a UNIX license directly gotten
from the old AT&T or the old UNIX Labs. They are undead money-sucking
vampires.
--
Josh Good
There's still a cloud over Caldera's
release, because the current license
relies on assuming Caldera owned the copyright at the time (pretty sure
the courts said they didn't).
The cat's been out of the bag since ~ 2002, almost 20 years. In effect,
it's too late anyway.