[TUHS] SCO sues IBM?

[michael_davidson@pacbell.net (Michael Davidson)]

----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Jeremy <peter.jeremy@alcatel.com.au>
To: Jeffrey Sharp <jss at subatomix.com>
Cc: UNIX Heritage Society <tuhs at tuhs.org>
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2003 1:15 PM
Subject: Re: [TUHS] SCO sues IBM?


> On 2003-Mar-10 14:21:00 -0600, Jeffrey Sharp <jss at subatomix.com> wrote:
> >On Sunday, March 9, 2003, Michael Davidson wrote:
> >> I will, however, ask for an "official" statement of SCO's current
position
> >> on "Ancient UNIX"
> >
> >But once they've released it under a BSD-style license, it is released.
They
> >simply can't unrelease it. They don't have to continue distributing it,
but
> >they can't stop me from doing what the license explicitly allows. So
their
> >current position WRT ancient UNIX may not mave much legal weight. IANAL,
> >TINLA.
>
> AFAIK, the only evidence we have that it is released under a BSD-style
> license is an e-mail allegedly from an authorised person within SCO.
> Warren has not been able to find an equivalent statement on their
> website.  I suspect Warren is concerned that they could claim it was
> never released - ie the e-mail is a faked/forged or the sender didn't
> have the authority to make the claims therein.
>

I can assure you that the email from Dion Johnson was and is genuine.
The release of "Ancient UNIX" under a BSD license was agreed to by
Ransom Love (then president and CEO of Caldera), Drew Spencer
(then CTO of Caldera), Dion, myself and others.

I realise that some people are concerned that they can no longer find
the "Ancient UNIX" license on the SCO web site - I wouldn't read too
much into that - the "Ancient UNIX" stuff was always tucked away in
an obscure corner - I suspect that the link to it just got lost when we
stopped doing free evaluation licenses for the current product.

Anyway, as I said, I will try to get an "official statement" about the
"Ancient UNIX" license by the end of the week - I expect that statement
will simply re-affirm what you already know - ie that it has been released
under a BSD license, and possibly re-emphasize the fact that System III,
and System V are *NOT* covered by that license.
(However, I am *not* in a position where I can make such a statement
on behalf on SCO which is why I'm afraid you will have to wait a few
days so that I can get you the "official" position).