From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: grog@lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey) Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 10:38:03 +1030 Subject: [pups] Re: Condition of 2BSD In-Reply-To: <200303191740.h2JHeUf02457@moe.2bsd.com> References: <200303191740.h2JHeUf02457@moe.2bsd.com> Message-ID: <20030320000803.GD47194@wantadilla.lemis.com> On Wednesday, 19 March 2003 at 9:40:30 -0800, Steven M. Schultz wrote: > >> I have a small question, which I hope you can clarify for me. I'm in a >> little argument with a person involved in NetBSD. > > Ummm, I'm not a lawyer of course... > >> He claims that NetBSD is the oldest free BSD still alive, which I reacted >> to since it was my belief that 2BSD now is free. > > But is 2BSD free? That I don't know. It is more free than it was > a long time ago but After Caldera released the Ancient UNIX license last January, 2BSD must be free, unless I'm missing something. >> This have resulted in the claim that Berkley is the one that is >> restricting 2BSD, which was news to me. Is this in any way correct? The > >> >> * Copyright (c) 1986 Regents of the University of California. >> * All rights reserved. The Berkeley software License Agreement >> * specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution. > > That was the earlier version of the BSD license - when you had to have > a ATT/USL/BellLabs license in order to obtain BSD at all. > > I am not sure I have a copy of the original UCB license but I think > part of it involved having a ATT/USL license. Right, but that's what Caldera released. >> Can you clarify this for me, please? :-) > > Does the current state of the Caldera/SCO/whatever license override > any existing licenses? THAT I do not know. My understanding (and I'm pretty sure it's correct) is that it replaces the old AT&T license for the specified products, including all AT&T precursors of [1-4]BSD. > If that is the case > then I would say that 2BSD is indeed free, on the other hand if people > are still legally constrained by the earlier license then 2BSD is > not totally free. Earlier versions of NetBSD would not be free > either because they contain "encumbered code" from the era when a > ATT/USL license was required. They should now be free for the same reason. Greg -- Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 187 bytes Desc: not available URL: