From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: imp@bsdimp.com (M. Warner Losh)
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 15:39:16 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: [TUHS] Legality of porting ancient UNIX
In-Reply-To: <20051011212300.48800.qmail@web26109.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
References: <20051011212300.48800.qmail@web26109.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <20051011.153916.36665578.imp@bsdimp.com>

In message: <20051011212300.48800.qmail at web26109.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
            Jose R Valverde <txomsy at yahoo.es> writes: One of the
: factors that helped settle (again if I remember well) was that ATT
: had failed to adequately state its Copyright on UNIX version 32V
: (may be more, my memory's weak) that had been distributed in source
: code, and hence those sources by the then current Copyright law, had
: fallen in the Public Domain.

The text you quoted makes it clear that the judge didn't rule that
they had fallen into the public domain.  He'd ruled that he didn't
think that AT&T would be successful at demonstrating a good copyright
title to the code if the matter went to trial.  A subtle difference,
to be sure, but an important one.

However, given that caldera released them with a bsd-like license, I
think the issue is effectively moot at this point...

Warner