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

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

[segaloco via TUHS]

Did some reading today, curious on the current state of things with AT&T's UNIX copyright genealogy.  The series of events as I understand it are:

AT&T partners with Novell for the Univel initiative.

Novell then acquires System V and USL from AT&T.

Novell sells UNIX System V's source to SCO, but as the courts have ruled, not the copyright.

Novell gets purchased by Microfocus.

Microfocus gets purchased by OpenText Corporation.

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

What got me looking a bit closer into this is curiosity regarding how the opening of Solaris and the CDDL may impact publication of UNIX code between System III and SVR4.  I then felt the need to refresh on who might be the current copyright holder and this is where the trail has lead me.

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, but this may be reading too far into it.  There's also the concern that the ghost of SCO will continue to punish anyone else who tries with costly-but-doomed-to-fail litigation.  Have there been any happenings lately with regards to getting AT&T UNIX post-PDP-11 opened up more in the world?  Reading up a bit on OpenText's business, they don't seem like they're invested in the OS world, seems that their primary sector is content management.  Granted, there's certainly under-the-radar trading of bits and pieces, but it would be nice to have some more certainty about what can happen out in the open.

- Matt G.

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

[Marc Rochkind]

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Don't know the answer to your question, but last I knew the trademark (not
the copyright) was transferred to The Open Group. They came up with a set
of rules for what UNIX is and, as I understand it, for example, Linux is
not a UNIX-like system, it is a UNIX system. (The Open Group isn't
interested in implementations of the UNIX standard, only the standard
itself.)

Things change, and my information is a few years old. For all I know Elon
Musk owns it all now. ;-)

Marc

On Wed, Mar 13, 2024 at 6:34 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:

> Did some reading today, curious on the current state of things with AT&T's
> UNIX copyright genealogy.  The series of events as I understand it are:
>
> AT&T partners with Novell for the Univel initiative.
>
> Novell then acquires System V and USL from AT&T.
>
> Novell sells UNIX System V's source to SCO, but as the courts have ruled,
> not the copyright.
>
> Novell gets purchased by Microfocus.
>
> Microfocus gets purchased by OpenText Corporation.
>
> Does this make OpenText the current copyright holders of the commercial
> UNIX line from AT&T.
>
> What got me looking a bit closer into this is curiosity regarding how the
> opening of Solaris and the CDDL may impact publication of UNIX code between
> System III and SVR4.  I then felt the need to refresh on who might be the
> current copyright holder and this is where the trail has lead me.
>
> 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, but this may be reading too far into
> it.  There's also the concern that the ghost of SCO will continue to punish
> anyone else who tries with costly-but-doomed-to-fail litigation.  Have
> there been any happenings lately with regards to getting AT&T UNIX
> post-PDP-11 opened up more in the world?  Reading up a bit on OpenText's
> business, they don't seem like they're invested in the OS world, seems that
> their primary sector is content management.  Granted, there's certainly
> under-the-radar trading of bits and pieces, but it would be nice to have
> some more certainty about what can happen out in the open.
>
> - Matt G.
>


-- 
*My new email address is mrochkind@gmail.com <mrochkind@gmail.com>*

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

[Warner Losh]

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On Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 8:14 PM Marc Rochkind <mrochkind@gmail.com> wrote:

> Don't know the answer to your question, but last I knew the trademark (not
> the copyright) was transferred to The Open Group. They came up with a set
> of rules for what UNIX is and, as I understand it, for example, Linux is
> not a UNIX-like system, it is a UNIX system.
>

Only some distributions... only a few have gone to the hassle of being
certified... and usually on only on or two architectures.

(The Open Group isn't interested in implementations of the UNIX standard,
> only the standard itself.)
>
> Things change, and my information is a few years old. For all I know Elon
> Musk owns it all now. ;-)
>

Last I checked, no.

Of course by that measure, Unix isn't UNIX anymore...

Warner

Marc
>
> On Wed, Mar 13, 2024 at 6:34 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
>
>> Did some reading today, curious on the current state of things with
>> AT&T's UNIX copyright genealogy.  The series of events as I understand it
>> are:
>>
>> AT&T partners with Novell for the Univel initiative.
>>
>> Novell then acquires System V and USL from AT&T.
>>
>> Novell sells UNIX System V's source to SCO, but as the courts have ruled,
>> not the copyright.
>>
>> Novell gets purchased by Microfocus.
>>
>> Microfocus gets purchased by OpenText Corporation.
>>
>> Does this make OpenText the current copyright holders of the commercial
>> UNIX line from AT&T.
>>
>> What got me looking a bit closer into this is curiosity regarding how the
>> opening of Solaris and the CDDL may impact publication of UNIX code between
>> System III and SVR4.  I then felt the need to refresh on who might be the
>> current copyright holder and this is where the trail has lead me.
>>
>> 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, but this may be reading too far into
>> it.  There's also the concern that the ghost of SCO will continue to punish
>> anyone else who tries with costly-but-doomed-to-fail litigation.  Have
>> there been any happenings lately with regards to getting AT&T UNIX
>> post-PDP-11 opened up more in the world?  Reading up a bit on OpenText's
>> business, they don't seem like they're invested in the OS world, seems that
>> their primary sector is content management.  Granted, there's certainly
>> under-the-radar trading of bits and pieces, but it would be nice to have
>> some more certainty about what can happen out in the open.
>>
>> - Matt G.
>>
>
>
> --
> *My new email address is mrochkind@gmail.com <mrochkind@gmail.com>*
>

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

[Steve Nickolas]

On Wed, 13 Mar 2024, Marc Rochkind wrote:

> Don't know the answer to your question, but last I knew the trademark (not
> the copyright) was transferred to The Open Group. They came up with a set
> of rules for what UNIX is and, as I understand it, for example, Linux is
> not a UNIX-like system, it is a UNIX system. (The Open Group isn't
> interested in implementations of the UNIX standard, only the standard
> itself.)

Only those distros that paid them for the right to be called such.

-uso.

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

[Stuff Received]

On 2024-03-13 23:40, Steve Nickolas wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Mar 2024, Marc Rochkind wrote:
> 
>> Don't know the answer to your question, but last I knew the trademark 
>> (not
>> the copyright) was transferred to The Open Group. They came up with a set
>> of rules for what UNIX is and, as I understand it, for example, Linux is
>> not a UNIX-like system, it is a UNIX system. (The Open Group isn't
>> interested in implementations of the UNIX standard, only the standard
>> itself.)
> 
> Only those distros that paid them for the right to be called such.

Not quite -- they do to pass the Single Unix Spec tests.

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

[Warner Losh]

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On Thu, Mar 14, 2024 at 12:38 PM Stuff Received <stuff@riddermarkfarm.ca>
wrote:

> On 2024-03-13 23:40, Steve Nickolas wrote:
> > On Wed, 13 Mar 2024, Marc Rochkind wrote:
> >
> >> Don't know the answer to your question, but last I knew the trademark
> >> (not
> >> the copyright) was transferred to The Open Group. They came up with a
> set
> >> of rules for what UNIX is and, as I understand it, for example, Linux is
> >> not a UNIX-like system, it is a UNIX system. (The Open Group isn't
> >> interested in implementations of the UNIX standard, only the standard
> >> itself.)
> >
> > Only those distros that paid them for the right to be called such.
>
> Not quite -- they do to pass the Single Unix Spec tests.
>

Only the people that pay for the certification get to claim certified
results.
The Single Unix Spec is about 20 years old at this point, though. There's
been two soon to be three major revisions to Unix since then.

It doesn't matter if they pass w/o payment. That confers no rights to use
the name Unix. Otherwise, FreeBSD, NetBSD and I think OpenBSD
would all be able to use the name 'Unix'. They've all passed some variation
of
the Unix tests over the years...

Warner

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

[Daniel Tameling]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2024 at 02:38:03PM -0400, Stuff Received wrote:
> On 2024-03-13 23:40, Steve Nickolas wrote:
> > On Wed, 13 Mar 2024, Marc Rochkind wrote:
> > 
> > > Don't know the answer to your question, but last I knew the
> > > trademark (not
> > > the copyright) was transferred to The Open Group. They came up with a set
> > > of rules for what UNIX is and, as I understand it, for example, Linux is
> > > not a UNIX-like system, it is a UNIX system. (The Open Group isn't
> > > interested in implementations of the UNIX standard, only the standard
> > > itself.)
> > 
> > Only those distros that paid them for the right to be called such.
> 
> Not quite -- they do to pass the Single Unix Spec tests.
> 
> 

People here might enjoy this first hand account of making MacOS fit
for the certification:

https://www.quora.com/What-goes-into-making-an-OS-to-be-Unix-compliant-certified

2 representive quotes:

"I was the tech lead at Apple for making Mac OS X pass UNIX
certification, and it was done to get Apple out of a $200M lawsuit
filed by The Open Group, for use of the UNIX™ trademark in
advertising.

The lawsuit was filed because the owner of Mac OS X Server kept
putting “UNIX” on the web site, and all other marketing collateral for
the Server product."

"If I were asked to do the same thing for Linux, it likely would take
five years, and two dozen people.

Linux is pretty balkanize, has a lot of kingdom building, and you have
to pee on everything to make it smell like Linux.

I could do the same in FreeBSD in about a year and a half, with a
dozen co-conspirators to run the changes through."

--
Kind regards,
Daniel

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

[Chet Ramey]

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On 3/14/24 4:13 PM, Daniel Tameling wrote:

> People here might enjoy this first hand account of making MacOS fit
> for the certification:
> 
> https://www.quora.com/What-goes-into-making-an-OS-to-be-Unix-compliant-certified

Terry Lambert and Len Lattanzi (Len was the one I primarily dealt with).
He never did admit why he sent so many small posix-mode fixes, but I
appreciated them. This was mid-2004.

Chet
-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
		 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/


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

[John Cowan]

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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.

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

[Warner Losh]

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On Wed, Mar 13, 2024 at 6:33 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:

> Did some reading today, curious on the current state of things with AT&T's
> UNIX copyright genealogy.  The series of events as I understand it are:
>
> AT&T partners with Novell for the Univel initiative.
>
> Novell then acquires System V and USL from AT&T.
>

Substantially all the assets. However, what does that mean? In this case, I
think it does include copyright.


> Novell sells UNIX System V's source to SCO, but as the courts have ruled,
> not the copyright.
>

Which puts, some say, the ancient Unix license grants at risk. However, I'd
contend that Novell knew of the grant and did nothing, so might be barred
by estoppel from asserting it at a later date. While copyright law
generally doesn't work like this, were one to create a defense of copyright
abuse for someone popping up years after the apparent copyright holder
granted permission, a defense of estoppel would be good in this case where
Novell knew, or should have known, this was going on, but did nothing to
fight the fraud of granting a license w/o rights.


> Novell gets purchased by Microfocus.
>
> Microfocus gets purchased by OpenText Corporation.
>
> Does this make OpenText the current copyright holders of the commercial
> UNIX line from AT&T.
>

It would depend a lot, like we found in the SCO litigation, what exactly
was transferred, what the contracts say, and how any ambiguity in said
contracts is adjudicated. This many years after the fact, such litigation
may be tricky to undertake.


> What got me looking a bit closer into this is curiosity regarding how the
> opening of Solaris and the CDDL may impact publication of UNIX code between
> System III and SVR4.  I then felt the need to refresh on who might be the
> current copyright holder and this is where the trail has lead me.
>

At the time, though I have no reference for it, Sun bought a paid-up
license from AT&T and part of that purchase included the right to
distribute the source code in the way they did. This was a special deal Sun
cut with AT&T. Sun also had to renegotiate scores of 3rd party contracts to
include enough of the system to be viable. I recall reading this in the
press, as well as hearing about it from friends at Sun. Years later, over
drinks, I heard about it from Glen Weinberg who was my VP. He'd be
instrumental in pulling it together. Not exactly a firsthand written
source, but someone that would know... Also, though, that was over a decade
ago, wine was involved, so I might be misremembering the details, but I'm
sure of the main thrust...

I also found:

So how is it Sun is permitted to open source Unix outright while IBM is
sued for more than US$5 billion in damages? Sun is mum on particulars, but
it has said it licensed additional rights in a 2003 deal in which it paid
SCO US$9.3 million.

at
https://www.zdnet.com/article/sun-poised-to-take-open-source-solaris-step/
dated in 2005.


> 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, but this may be reading too far into
> it.


I have never, ever once heard that. There's no precedent here: It's all
what the contracts say. Since Sun paid cash money (or maybe stock) to AT&T,
that's a new, special contract. I don't think this is implied even a tiny
bit: there's no contract that permits it.


> There's also the concern that the ghost of SCO will continue to punish
> anyone else who tries with costly-but-doomed-to-fail litigation.


Ah, that's different... Though SCO's rights as a revenue collector, but not
rights hold, were established, so it's unlikely they will... Their latest
litigation isn't based on their Unix IP.


> Have there been any happenings lately with regards to getting AT&T UNIX
> post-PDP-11 opened up more in the world?


So we have Berkeley Unix: V32, which formed the basis for 3BSD, had a
preliminary ruling that AT&T lost its copyrights to at least V32, the Vax
7th Edition port they did, due to the fact that (a) they didn't mark the
source as copyright and (b) they widely distributed it. This preliminary
ruling was never made final, as the case was settled. But it was the result
of a very extensive record that was established by the litigants. But, if
you talk to some of the old CSRG folks, they'll tell you that frees up BSD.
In addition, the settlement of the case put to bed the issue in the BSD
world by AT&T explicitly licensing some files and Berkeley creating
4.4BSD-lite. So from that perspective, that bit of post PDP-11 Unix is on
solid legal ground.

Everything else? Apart from Lucent licensing the 8th, 9th and 10th Edition
Unix permissively, there's very little. You can find the sources online, if
you really want. You can study them and write commentary about them: that's
black letter law on fair use. You can't, however, build a new system based
on them, since a commercial use would venture outside of fair use
(potentially: abandonware has never been litigated so there's a somewhat
high legal risk you might be infringing on the rights. Novel copyright
legal theories are a dime a dozen and rarely ultimately successful).


> Reading up a bit on OpenText's business, they don't seem like they're
> invested in the OS world, seems that their primary sector is content
> management.  Granted, there's certainly under-the-radar trading of bits and
> pieces, but it would be nice to have some more certainty about what can
> happen out in the open.
>

People have worked the back channels to try to even find the right person
to talk to, so far to no good effect. They were primarily interested in
clearing up the legal ambiguity surrounding the Ancient Unix Licenses, but
even that narrow ask has gone nowhere to date (at least publicly, I'm not
privy to what might be still private).

The main problem with any of this is that all the companies that took
System V made changes to customize it for their hardware. That means even
if OpenText is the successor of interest for the Unix Copyrights, and even
if you could get someone there interested in granting a super-permissive
license on all that material (putting aside for the moment what, exactly,
was copyrighted and transferred) for no financial benefit for OpenText
(only the risk of a counter suit from someone else who, though backroom
deals not disclosed to the public, who thinks they own the rights).  Even
if you get through all that, none of the System V system would be opened up
because the licensees of those systems also have rights to what they
produced and without their permission, you would not have rights to
distribute things permissively. At best, it would semi-legitimize some of
the available to download tapes that one can find on the internet that
purport to be verbatim copies of the source from AT&T. Though much of the
later work was done by third parties and consortia, so even if AT&T
successor in interest gave the nod, those other parties might not have
granted AT&T the right to do this.

So I'm not optimistic we'll ever see any further opening up of Ancient
Unix, which is now even older than the 7th edition was when the Ancient
Unix License was released.

Warner

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

[segaloco via TUHS]

On Thursday, March 14th, 2024 at 8:50 AM, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> At the time, though I have no reference for it, Sun bought a paid-up license from AT&T and part of that purchase included the right to distribute the source code in the way they did. This was a special deal Sun cut with AT&T.
>
> ...
> 
> I also found:
> 
> > So how is it Sun is permitted to open source Unix outright while IBM is sued for more than US$5 billion in damages? Sun is mum on particulars, but it has said it licensed additional rights in a 2003 deal in which it paid SCO US$9.3 million.
> 
> at https://www.zdnet.com/article/sun-poised-to-take-open-source-solaris-step/ dated in 2005.
>

That makes sense given the collaborative efforts between USL and Sun on SVR4 actually.

On Thursday, March 14th, 2024 at 8:50 AM, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:

>
> 
> The main problem with any of this is that all the companies that took System V made changes to customize it for their hardware.
>
> ...
>
> Though much of the later work was done by third parties and consortia, so even if AT&T successor in interest gave the nod, those other parties might not have granted AT&T the right to do this.
> 
> Warner

That's a good point, like many long-standing codebases, System V code is littered with little "this is copyright this subcontractor, this is copyright that contributor, etc." and big thorough license descriptions sitting at the top of source files weren't in vogue at the time so it offers confusion over ownership with little paths to clarity.  Maybe a happy middle ground would be a 4.4BSD-Lite-ish approach to System V in which anything demonstrated to be exact program text that is not out in the open in the form of Research or illumos code can be scrubbed from, say, SVR4, and that fragmentary codebase could then fly under the research license or CDDL or what have you.

As you mention though, what company wants to devote their resources to a revenue-less project like that?  It'd be swell if some sort of publicly funded organization like the Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution, or equivalents in other locales could take up that mantle on this and other software preservation efforts.  That's something I think about often in my retro video game disassembly work, it'd be nice to preserve these historically significant applications and systems as a formal career rather than just hobby stuff.  But right, where's the revenue stream to convince anyone to do that, especially the legal hurdles involved?  Lawyers ain't cheap...

- Matt G.