[TUHS] Re: UNIX System V Release 2.2 gdts Vax-780

[replying only to list] At 2023-03-17T01:05:56+0000, segaloco via TUHS wrote: Indeed not. For any publicly traded company, and not a few privately held ones, the _only_ ethical principle is, as the cryptocurrency aficionados say, "number go up!" (increase the share price). This is speculative. I think the lengthy and expensive SCO v. IBM case established a (rebuttable) presumption that much of what we call Unix, at least those parts that the Berkeley CSRG didn't replace or tidy up, is an orphaned work.[1] For purposes of copyright litigation, IBM had (and has) all the money in the world, and SCOX(E) had nearly all the money in the world thanks to underwriting (by Microsoft and others) who saw the potential for extracting royalties from every Linux installation in every data center in the world. I would also point out that fair use _is_ "playing within the lines". Researching copyright title would appear to be a costly process, at least for a work like Unix System V, which had many corporate contributors, some of which are now defunct or whose status is unknown, and whose legal successors-in-interest cannot be identified, let alone for paperwork sufficient to clarify copyright ownership (for just one aspect of what may have been a diversified business), located. Think like a corporation: are you going to send off a team of senior engineers and attorneys to research this stuff for jollies? For however long it takes? What's the ROI? If you're the director-level person issuing this decree, you can expect to be challenged to justify yourself to your Vice President at every quarterly meeting. Who is going to say "yes" to that sort of project? I'm sorry, but this view strikes me as cowardly. Even granting the existing copyright regime all the legitimacy in the world, I think the evidence that the Unix System V copyrights have been responsibly stewarded is meager. Simply taking the System V sources and using them in commercial product, without source disclosure, is, I think, the most _likely_ means of agitating any potential copyright holders into assembling sufficient documentation to substantiate a claim of copyright ownership to a standard that wouldn't be laughed out of court. But I will grant that that could be perceived as a rude and uncooperative. If one concealed their provenance, it would rightly be considered unethical as well. Consequently, putting the Unix System V sources up as the historical and educational resource that the history of operating systems research and development unquestionably establishes them to be, _is_ the gentle, polite approach calibrated to elicit cooperation from friendly hands inside firms that may be involved, given that is apparently too costly for any one of these firms to slap up a web page saying, "yup, it's ours, and here's the proof!", without exposing themselves to unfriendly attention from the Federal Trade Commission for false dealing. Getting a DMCA takedown notice would not, I am sure, be pleasant, but it happens all the time and as far as I can tell it does not ruin lives or even, of itself, cost people money. That said, I wouldn't embark on the project without competent legal assistance that is prepared to file a counter-notice, to discourage the issue of a BS takedown notice.[2] The whole point is to build a documentary record we can have some confidence in, for scholarly purposes among others. But scholarly purposes don't suffice to motivate anyone who has, or thinks they might have, the rights to Unix System V, or they would have told us already. If we want to find out who really has the rights to this stuff, we've got to give them a reason to find out whether they do and announce themselves. As noted above, we've got to give them a reason to say "yes", even if it comes with a "no": "yes, this is mine, and here is how I know, and no, you can't do what you're doing". And that means posing a question that share price-sensitive executives are willing to find the answer to. If you want my prediction, I don't think anyone will do anything. The answer to the question will not be uttered, but will resemble this. "We believe this asset has no commercial value. We don't know if we own it or not, and finding out would cost money we're not willing to spend." If I'm right, we'll be waiting a long time for that takedown notice. Regards, Branden [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_work [2] Again, I'm not a lawyer, but my half-educated guess is that either the original takedown notice itself, if sufficiently clear, or any response to a counter-notice, would have to sufficiently clearly allege ownership of Unix System V copyrights that if the allegations were false, they would constitute "slander of title", which is one of the torts upon which the SCO v. IBM case turned. So it would still accomplish our mission: if someone steps forward falsely claiming copyright ownership of the code, they open themselves up to liability to those firm(s) that actually do. And if the true title-holders take the BS title-holders to court over it, we get our question answered then, too. If the lawsuit is profitable, then it's not inconceivable that we will establish the exact sort of friendly relationship with the true title-holders that you are afraid of jeopardizing. Because anyone willing to issue a DMCA takedown notice--to a zero-profit bunch of old geeks with a web page--falsely claiming ownership of Unix System V copyrights is, I suspect, already making these fraudulent claims in private communications to firms who are paying them license fees. Why? Because why does any corporation do anything? For the money. This is one way we could go from being bold to being bona fide. A bit of courage could bring benefits for all except fraudsters.