[TUHS] Re: Is OpenText Corporation the Current System V Copyright Holder?

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1676 bytes --]

On Wed, Mar 13, 2024 at 8:33 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:

Does this make OpenText the current copyright holders of the commercial
> UNIX line from AT&T.
>

If they haven't sold (or given away) the rights.  Copyright can only be
abandoned by an explicit act of the owner, not by mere neglect.

My understanding too is that Sun's release under the CDDL set the precedent
> that other sub-licencees of System V codebases are also at liberty to
> relicense their codebases,
>

Very unlikely (which is lawyerese for "Not a chance").  The terms of the
AT&T master license to Sun aren't public knowledge, but it probably limited
Sun to distributing Solaris 2.0+ in binary form (with the usual exceptions
around contractors, etc.).  To distribute Solaris in source form
would require Sun to license the rights needed to do so from the copyright
owner.

It's not clear to me just who Sun licensed them from, thanks to the
Novell-SCO dispute.  At any rate, Sun got what they considered sufficient
title for the Solaris 11 release under the CDDL  But that would not allow
any other licensee of AT&T or its successors in title to do the same thing
without a separate license from the owner.  Whatever the precise terms of
the Sun-Novell license, it would grant rights to Sun and nobody else.

If Acme Films licenses the right to make a movie of _Passionate Unix_, a
book owned by Yoyodyne Publishing, then another movie licensee of Yoyodyne
wouldn't get the rights, based on *their* movie license, to publish the
original book.  (In practice Acme would insist that Yoyodyne not license
the movie rights to anyone else.)

IANAI; TINLA.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3234 bytes --]