20 Jan
2023
20 Jan
'23
3:08 a.m.
On Thu, Jan 19, 2023, at 11:07, Kevin Bowling wrote:
However OpenSolaris provides a sober analysis of what
you are after:
1) how much work is involved in open sourcing a commercial UNIX. The
then CEO blogged about how he had personal involvement to get it done,
and the high hurdle was lawyer work getting rights and approvals from
third parties to re-license everything. AIX has, in addition to
whatever vestiges of Bell/AT&T code, Bull and Motorola code and
probably a lot of others (OSF, HP, Sun, etc are mentioned in the
copyrights on install) whose rights may not exist in any recognizable
form after 40 years.
This really reminds me how much I wish there was the equivalent of a probate process for
intellectual property “end of life” situations. Registered marks demand the onus be upon
the registrant to actively enforce the monopoly protection or they lose the protection.
But if you found a created work, you have no way of finding out who has claims upon it.
And at this point, almost nothing is “sold” under a license that retains the right of
first sale, but licensed.
And the US hasn’t even gotten to the point where copy protected works expire their
protection and we get to find out if it’s a DMCA violation to circumvent copy protection
without an explicit grant from the Librarian of Congress. I mean, I know what 17USC§1201
seems to mean today, but who’s to know what those words will appear to have meant to their
authors when interpreted many decades from now.