9 Sep
2022
9 Sep
'22
6:05 a.m.
On Thu, 8 Sep 2022, Warner Losh wrote:
On Thu, Sep 8, 2022 at 5:29 PM Steve Nickolas
<usotsuki(a)buric.co> wrote:
I'm probably the only one brazen enough to put it to the test.
For some years, I've wanted to create a free implementation of System V,
and then move on from there. (I know there's limited utility for such a
thing, because of the BSDs.)
A few things actually hinge on this. If it were considered a fact, and
not a mere opinion, that 32V was PD, then I could be sure that certain
things were safe to use, rather than having to rewrite (including some
particularly tricky stuff the BSDs never fully reimplemented, like
diff(1)).
I actually did write a replacement for the Caldera header. (I still hold
that the Caldera license is void because it has a Caldera copyright claim,
and it has been proven in court that they didn't have the copyright to
give.) It just says why I think it *should* be safe to use the code.
-uso.
On Thu, 8 Sep 2022, Warner Losh wrote:
It would be nice. At this late date, one wonders what would happen if it
were litigated again... I suspect that nobody would bother given the
small possible gain and the huge expense... But it would also reduce
shareholder values to explicitly say there's no copyright here or to
clarify that the ancient licenses are valid. So we're in this state
where it's basically free and clear, treated like it's free and clear,
but really isn't free and clear.
Warner But it likely didn't matter, since 32v
likely lost its copyright
protection due to AT&T distributing too many copies without the required
copyright markings. At least that was the preliminary ruling that caused
the suit to be settled... AT&T didn't want it finalized, though the cat
was somewhat out of the bag at this point...
It would be nice if that were an absolute rather than a probably, because
then the status for 32V wouldn't be clouded.