17 Oct
2024
17 Oct
'24
4:30 a.m.
Hello, all.
In 2002, Caldera released Ancient Unix code under Caldera
license:
<https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf>
based on the four-clause BSD license:
<https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-4-Clause.html>
Consequently, it was used by derived projects, such as
Traditional Vi:
<https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/>
This proect having been abandoned and orphaned since 2005, I
wanted to host it on GNU Savanna and there to breath some
life into it. Unfortunately, the 4-clause BSD license is
incompatible with GPL:
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD>
The incompatibilty is due entirely to the infamous third
clause about adverising. Three years prior to Caldera's
release of old Unix code, The Berkley Univercity removed
this clause, producing the GNU-compatible modified BSD
License:
<https://opensource.org/license/BSD-3-clause>
They published a notice to that effect on their FTP:
<ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/README.Impt.License.Change>
Although it has been taken down[1], copies exist all over
the internet, e.g.:
<https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abbrev/punix/refs/heads/master/README.Impt.License.Change>
That said, is there a chance that the copyright holder of
Ancient Will agree to release a similar note regarding
everying released under Caldera license? If there is, whom
shall I contact about it? It will benefit everybody using
Ancient Unix code.
____________________
1. Why the murrain of FTP servers all over the world?
17 Oct
17 Oct
4:55 a.m.
On Wed, Oct 16, 2024, 4:30 PM Anton Shepelev <anton.txt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hello, all.
In 2002, Caldera released Ancient Unix code under Caldera
license:
<https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf>
based on the four-clause BSD license:
<https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-4-Clause.html>
Consequently, it was used by derived projects, such as
Traditional Vi:
<https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/>
This proect having been abandoned and orphaned since 2005, I
wanted to host it on GNU Savanna and there to breath some
life into it. Unfortunately, the 4-clause BSD license is
incompatible with GPL:
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD>
The incompatibilty is due entirely to the infamous third
clause about adverising. Three years prior to Caldera's
release of old Unix code, The Berkley Univercity removed
this clause, producing the GNU-compatible modified BSD
License:
<https://opensource.org/license/BSD-3-clause>
They published a notice to that effect on their FTP:
<ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/README.Impt.License.Change>
Although it has been taken down[1], copies exist all over
the internet, e.g.:
<
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abbrev/punix/refs/heads/master/README.Imp…
That said, is there a chance that the copyright holder of
Ancient Will agree to release a similar note regarding
everying released under Caldera license? If there is, whom
shall I contact about it? It will benefit everybody using
Ancient Unix code.
That's a complicated question. Does 32V have a valid copyright? Maybe,
maybe not. There is a preliminary ruling suggesting no that effectively
forced AT&T to settle with the Regents, but it was never finalized. There's
good reasons to believe its logic and fact pattern would apply to 7th
edition and maybe 6th.
Putting that aside, there has been a dispute over what copyrights
transferred from Novell to SCO. A judge said no for System V, undermining
SCO's case. But older copyrights weren't explivitly named, but the same
thing: the facts patterns for System V likely applied to older Unix.
So, Novell's assets have been sold 4 times or more. Finding the right
people inside the current company to talk to is hard. It's not their
promary business. It's not clear how many rights they have. It's hard to
show how it could benefit them. And even if you could, another sale might
happen in the mean time.
People have been teying to get even a statement that old SCO legitimately
granted the Ancient license to no avail.
So I'm doubtful. Your best bet is to not make your changes available under
the GPL. They cut against the spirit of 4 clause BSD and step in the middle
of a very old Stallman vs Berkeley dispute from the 4.2 era...
At this point, it's a mess
Warner
____________________
1. Why the murrain of FTP servers all over the world?
5:34 a.m.
Warner Losh to Anton Shepelev:
Complicated indeed, and to a degree I should not have
expected.
So it was not an arbitrary decision by Caldera to use the
original BSD license? Can they have used the modern three-
clause version with equal ease?
In 2002,
Caldera released Ancient Unix code under
Caldera license:
<https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf>
based on the four-clause BSD license:
<https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-4-Clause.html>
[...]
Unfortunately, the 4-clause BSD license is incompatible
with GPL:
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD>
The incompatibilty is due entirely to the infamous third
clause about adverising. Three years prior to Caldera's
release of old Unix code, The Berkley Univercity removed
this clause, producing the GNU-compatible modified BSD
License:
[...]
That said, is there a chance that the copyright holder
of Ancient Will agree to release a similar note
regarding everything released under Caldera license?
That's a complicated question.
[...snipped.but.read...] Finding the right people inside the current company
to
talk to is hard. It's not their promary business. It's not
clear how many rights they have. It's hard to show how it
could benefit them.
No worldly benefit; the bare goodwill is all I can hope for.
So I'm doubtful. Your best bet is to not make
your changes
available under the GPL.
The four-clause BSD license excludes not only GPL itself,
but (I think) the many GPL-compatible licenses. The
simplest thing for me to do is probably to keep the BSD-like
Caldera license. Thanks for the feedback, Warner!
5:58 a.m.
On Wednesday, October 16th, 2024 at 4:34 PM, Anton Shepelev <anton.txt(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Warner Losh to Anton Shepelev:
Complicated indeed, and to a degree I should not have
expected.
So it was not an arbitrary decision by Caldera to use the
original BSD license? Can they have used the modern three-
clause version with equal ease?
The devilish side of me often thinks of the concept of dereliction of copyright and the
precedent for demonstrating something has passed hands enough and been publicized enough
without demonstrably action by the legal copyright holder that any claim made all those
years later is without standing; they have not over time demonstrated any efforts to
effectively police their ownership of the property. I believe this is part of the tale
with 32V.
Given the lack of effort by post-Novell holders to even establish specific claims to UNIX
copyrights...and the court agreeing way back when that Novell, not SCO, became the arbiter
of UNIX System V, this has me wonder from time to time if someone just going out there and
doing a published release of this stuff would materially amount to legal jeopardy. My
take on this is there are three primary players in the question of System V ownership
(ignoring all the sub-licensees and holders of copyright to individual files for a
moment). On one hand, Bell Laboratories and Western Electric DNA lives on in Nokia. On
another, USG/USL legacy passed hands from Novell to a holding company to MicroFocus, then
to OpenText. Then there's the SCO track that ends at Xinuos today.
Between Nokia, OpenText, and Xinuos, the latter is the only I see actively selling UNIX
System V products (UnixWare), but also being that they descend from the SCO branch of the
tree here, and SCO continues to fail to use UNIX as a vehicle for
riches-through-litigation, I don't think anyone really needs to worry about Xinuos.
Nokia spun down 5ESS stuff this past year or so, which was their most visible
UNIX-adjacent thing (via UNIX-RTR). OpenText as an organization today seems focused on
CMS solutions and MicroFocus, which it acquired, is most famous in my mind for their
compilers, especially COBOL. Given this, I highly doubt Nokia or OpenText give a hoot
about old UNIX code. Where they *may* care is getting subsequently sued by some copyright
holder of a contributed piece that had specific terms on transferring or sharing their
copyright with AT&T. Again though, then you just start recursing down the secondary,
tertiary, etc. claimants, it all depends on the terms which may be obscure to all their
legal folks by this point.
Anywho, in this year of 2024, if you really wanted to get down and dirty with a bunch of
lawyers and drive this one home, I suspect you'd want the ear of folks at Nokia,
OpenText, and to a lesser extent (if they'd listen...) Xinuos. Of course
there's then IBM, HP, Oracle, possibly Microsoft, really depends on the legal
circumstances surrounding their (and others) involvement with commercial UNIX. Of course
this is all my own research and I haven't consulted with any of these parties, so
YMMV regarding taking my analysis as absolute truth. I make no claims to speak for the
legal rights of any real or imaginary UNIX copyright holders.
- Matt G.
In 2002,
Caldera released Ancient Unix code under
Caldera license:
https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf
based on the four-clause BSD license:
https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-4-Clause.html
[...]
Unfortunately, the 4-clause BSD license is incompatible
with GPL:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD
The incompatibilty is due entirely to the infamous third
clause about adverising. Three years prior to Caldera's
release of old Unix code, The Berkley Univercity removed
this clause, producing the GNU-compatible modified BSD
License:
[...]
That said, is there a chance that the copyright holder
of Ancient Will agree to release a similar note
regarding everything released under Caldera license?
That's a complicated question.
[...snipped.but.read...] Finding the right people inside the current
company to
talk to is hard. It's not their promary business. It's not
clear how many rights they have. It's hard to show how it
could benefit them.
No worldly benefit; the bare goodwill is all I can hope for.
So I'm doubtful. Your best bet is to not
make your changes
available under the GPL.
The four-clause BSD license excludes not only GPL itself,
but (I think) the many GPL-compatible licenses. The
simplest thing for me to do is probably to keep the BSD-like
Caldera license. Thanks for the feedback, Warner! 
9:57 a.m.
On Oct 16, 2024, at 4:34 PM, Anton Shepelev <anton.txt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
So it was not an arbitrary decision by Caldera to use the
original BSD license? Can they have used the modern three-
clause version with equal ease?
It was almost certainly *not* an arbitrary decision, and it is reasonable to assume that
Caldera’s lawyers were quite aware of the variety of Open Source software licenses in
existence at the time they made this decision.
-- Chris
10:01 a.m.
On Oct 16, 2024, at 3:30 PM, Anton Shepelev <anton.txt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The incompatibilty is due entirely to the infamous third
clause about adverising. Three years prior to Caldera's
release of old Unix code, The Berkley Univercity removed
this clause, producing the GNU-compatible modified BSD
License:
There’s no such entity as The Berkeley University. It’s the University of California at
Berkeley, one of many parts of the University of California system. This may be important
if you’re trying to look up things in some databases, for example you may get hits that
matter for “University of California” because the “at Berkeley” isn’t always added.
-- Chris
7:51 p.m.
The code is marked "Property of the Regents of the University of
California." I was amused when I visited the campus years ago and
found the same thing on the “no trespassing” signs on the building
doors.
------ Original Message ------
From "Chris Hanson" <cmhanson(a)eschatologist.net>
To "Anton Shepelev" <anton.txt(a)gmail.com>
Cc tuhs(a)tuhs.org
Date 10/17/2024 12:01:10 AM
Subject [TUHS] Re: Can Ancient Unix be relicensed?
There’s no such entity as The Berkeley University. It’s the University of California at
Berkeley, one of many parts of the University of California system. This may be important
if you’re trying to look up things in some databases, for example you may get hits that
matter for “University of California” because the “at Berkeley” isn’t always added.
-- Chris
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days inactive
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days old
6 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
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Anton Shepelev -
Chris Hanson -
Ron Natalie -
segaloco -
Warner Losh