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* [TUHS] Can Ancient Unix be relicensed?
@ 2024-10-16 22:30 Anton Shepelev
  2024-10-16 22:55 ` [TUHS] " Warner Losh
  2024-10-17  4:01 ` Chris Hanson
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 7+ messages in thread
From: Anton Shepelev @ 2024-10-16 22:30 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Hello, all.

In 2002, Caldera released Ancient Unix code under Caldera
license:

   <https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf>

based on the four-clause BSD license:

   <https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-4-Clause.html>

Consequently, it was used by derived projects, such as
Traditional Vi:

   <https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/>

This proect having been abandoned and orphaned since 2005, I
wanted to host it on GNU Savanna and there to breath some
life into it.  Unfortunately, the 4-clause BSD license is
incompatible with GPL:

   <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD>

The incompatibilty is due entirely to the infamous third
clause about adverising.  Three years prior to Caldera's
release of old Unix code, The Berkley Univercity removed
this clause, producing the GNU-compatible modified BSD
License:

   <https://opensource.org/license/BSD-3-clause>

They published a notice to that effect on their FTP:

   <ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/README.Impt.License.Change>

Although it has been taken down[1], copies exist all over
the internet, e.g.:

   <https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abbrev/punix/refs/heads/master/README.Impt.License.Change>

That said, is there a chance that the copyright holder of
Ancient Will agree to release a similar note regarding
everying released under Caldera license?  If there is, whom
shall I contact about it?  It will benefit everybody using
Ancient Unix code.

____________________
1. Why the murrain of FTP servers all over the world?


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Can Ancient Unix be relicensed?
  2024-10-16 22:30 [TUHS] Can Ancient Unix be relicensed? Anton Shepelev
@ 2024-10-16 22:55 ` Warner Losh
  2024-10-16 23:34   ` Anton Shepelev
  2024-10-17  4:01 ` Chris Hanson
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread
From: Warner Losh @ 2024-10-16 22:55 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Anton Shepelev; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3035 bytes --]

On Wed, Oct 16, 2024, 4:30 PM Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello, all.
>
> In 2002, Caldera released Ancient Unix code under Caldera
> license:
>
>    <https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf>
>
> based on the four-clause BSD license:
>
>    <https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-4-Clause.html>
>
> Consequently, it was used by derived projects, such as
> Traditional Vi:
>
>    <https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/>
>
> This proect having been abandoned and orphaned since 2005, I
> wanted to host it on GNU Savanna and there to breath some
> life into it.  Unfortunately, the 4-clause BSD license is
> incompatible with GPL:
>
>    <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD>
>
> The incompatibilty is due entirely to the infamous third
> clause about adverising.  Three years prior to Caldera's
> release of old Unix code, The Berkley Univercity removed
> this clause, producing the GNU-compatible modified BSD
> License:
>
>    <https://opensource.org/license/BSD-3-clause>
>
> They published a notice to that effect on their FTP:
>
>    <ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/README.Impt.License.Change>
>
> Although it has been taken down[1], copies exist all over
> the internet, e.g.:
>
>    <
> https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abbrev/punix/refs/heads/master/README.Impt.License.Change
> >
>
> That said, is there a chance that the copyright holder of
> Ancient Will agree to release a similar note regarding
> everying released under Caldera license?  If there is, whom
> shall I contact about it?  It will benefit everybody using
> Ancient Unix code.
>

That's a complicated question. Does 32V have a valid copyright? Maybe,
maybe not. There is a preliminary ruling suggesting no that effectively
forced AT&T to settle with the Regents, but it was never finalized. There's
good reasons to believe its logic and fact pattern would apply to 7th
edition and maybe 6th.

Putting that aside, there has been a dispute over what copyrights
transferred from Novell to SCO. A judge said no for System V, undermining
SCO's case. But older copyrights weren't explivitly named, but the same
thing: the facts patterns for System V likely applied to older Unix.

So, Novell's assets have been sold 4 times or more. Finding the right
people inside the current company to talk to is hard. It's not their
promary business. It's not clear how many rights they have. It's hard to
show how it could benefit them. And even if you could, another sale might
happen in the mean time.

People have been teying to get even a statement that old SCO legitimately
granted the Ancient license to no avail.

So I'm doubtful. Your best bet is to not make your changes available under
the GPL. They cut against the spirit of 4 clause BSD and step in the middle
of a very old Stallman vs Berkeley dispute from the 4.2 era...

At this point, it's a mess

Warner

____________________
> 1. Why the murrain of FTP servers all over the world?
>
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Can Ancient Unix be relicensed?
  2024-10-16 22:55 ` [TUHS] " Warner Losh
@ 2024-10-16 23:34   ` Anton Shepelev
  2024-10-16 23:58     ` segaloco via TUHS
  2024-10-17  3:57     ` Chris Hanson
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 7+ messages in thread
From: Anton Shepelev @ 2024-10-16 23:34 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Warner Losh to Anton Shepelev:

> > In 2002, Caldera released Ancient Unix code under
> > Caldera license:
> >
> >    <https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf>
> >
> > based on the four-clause BSD license:
> >
> >    <https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-4-Clause.html>
> >
> > [...]
> > Unfortunately, the 4-clause BSD license is incompatible
> > with GPL:
> >
> >    <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD>
> >
> > The incompatibilty is due entirely to the infamous third
> > clause about adverising.  Three years prior to Caldera's
> > release of old Unix code, The Berkley Univercity removed
> > this clause, producing the GNU-compatible modified BSD
> > License:
> > [...]
> > That said, is there a chance that the copyright holder
> > of Ancient Will agree to release a similar note
> > regarding everything released under Caldera license?
>
> That's a complicated question.
> [...snipped.but.read...]

Complicated indeed, and to a degree I should not have
expected.

So it was not an arbitrary decision by Caldera to use the
original BSD license?  Can they have used the modern three-
clause version with equal ease?

> Finding the right people inside the current company to
> talk to is hard. It's not their promary business. It's not
> clear how many rights they have.  It's hard to show how it
> could benefit them.

No worldly benefit; the bare goodwill is all I can hope for.

> So I'm doubtful. Your best bet is to not make your changes
> available under the GPL.

The four-clause BSD license excludes not only GPL itself,
but (I think) the many GPL-compatible licenses.  The
simplest thing for me to do is probably to keep the BSD-like
Caldera license.  Thanks for the feedback, Warner!


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Can Ancient Unix be relicensed?
  2024-10-16 23:34   ` Anton Shepelev
@ 2024-10-16 23:58     ` segaloco via TUHS
  2024-10-17  3:57     ` Chris Hanson
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread
From: segaloco via TUHS @ 2024-10-16 23:58 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Wednesday, October 16th, 2024 at 4:34 PM, Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@gmail.com> wrote:

> Warner Losh to Anton Shepelev:
> 
> > > In 2002, Caldera released Ancient Unix code under
> > > Caldera license:
> > > 
> > > https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf
> > > 
> > > based on the four-clause BSD license:
> > > 
> > > https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-4-Clause.html
> > > 
> > > [...]
> > > Unfortunately, the 4-clause BSD license is incompatible
> > > with GPL:
> > > 
> > > https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD
> > > 
> > > The incompatibilty is due entirely to the infamous third
> > > clause about adverising. Three years prior to Caldera's
> > > release of old Unix code, The Berkley Univercity removed
> > > this clause, producing the GNU-compatible modified BSD
> > > License:
> > > [...]
> > > That said, is there a chance that the copyright holder
> > > of Ancient Will agree to release a similar note
> > > regarding everything released under Caldera license?
> > 
> > That's a complicated question.
> > [...snipped.but.read...]
> 
> 
> Complicated indeed, and to a degree I should not have
> expected.
> 
> So it was not an arbitrary decision by Caldera to use the
> original BSD license? Can they have used the modern three-
> clause version with equal ease?
> 
> > Finding the right people inside the current company to
> > talk to is hard. It's not their promary business. It's not
> > clear how many rights they have. It's hard to show how it
> > could benefit them.
> 
> 
> No worldly benefit; the bare goodwill is all I can hope for.
> 
> > So I'm doubtful. Your best bet is to not make your changes
> > available under the GPL.
> 
> 
> The four-clause BSD license excludes not only GPL itself,
> but (I think) the many GPL-compatible licenses. The
> simplest thing for me to do is probably to keep the BSD-like
> Caldera license. Thanks for the feedback, Warner!

The devilish side of me often thinks of the concept of dereliction of copyright and the precedent for demonstrating something has passed hands enough and been publicized enough without demonstrably action by the legal copyright holder that any claim made all those years later is without standing; they have not over time demonstrated any efforts to effectively police their ownership of the property.  I believe this is part of the tale with 32V.

Given the lack of effort by post-Novell holders to even establish specific claims to UNIX copyrights...and the court agreeing way back when that Novell, not SCO, became the arbiter of UNIX System V, this has me wonder from time to time if someone just going out there and doing a published release of this stuff would materially amount to legal jeopardy.  My take on this is there are three primary players in the question of System V ownership (ignoring all the sub-licensees and holders of copyright to individual files for a moment).  On one hand, Bell Laboratories and Western Electric DNA lives on in Nokia.  On another, USG/USL legacy passed hands from Novell to a holding company to MicroFocus, then to OpenText.  Then there's the SCO track that ends at Xinuos today.

Between Nokia, OpenText, and Xinuos, the latter is the only I see actively selling UNIX System V products (UnixWare), but also being that they descend from the SCO branch of the tree here, and SCO continues to fail to use UNIX as a vehicle for riches-through-litigation, I don't think anyone really needs to worry about Xinuos.  Nokia spun down 5ESS stuff this past year or so, which was their most visible UNIX-adjacent thing (via UNIX-RTR).  OpenText as an organization today seems focused on CMS solutions and MicroFocus, which it acquired, is most famous in my mind for their compilers, especially COBOL.  Given this, I highly doubt Nokia or OpenText give a hoot about old UNIX code.  Where they *may* care is getting subsequently sued by some copyright holder of a contributed piece that had specific terms on transferring or sharing their copyright with AT&T.  Again though, then you just start recursing down the secondary, tertiary, etc. claimants, it all depends on the terms which may be obscure to all their legal folks by this point.

Anywho, in this year of 2024, if you really wanted to get down and dirty with a bunch of lawyers and drive this one home, I suspect you'd want the ear of folks at Nokia, OpenText, and to a lesser extent (if they'd listen...) Xinuos.  Of course there's then IBM, HP, Oracle, possibly Microsoft, really depends on the legal circumstances surrounding their (and others) involvement with commercial UNIX.  Of course this is all my own research and I haven't consulted with any of these parties, so YMMV regarding taking my analysis as absolute truth.  I make no claims to speak for the legal rights of any real or imaginary UNIX copyright holders.

- Matt G.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Can Ancient Unix be relicensed?
  2024-10-16 23:34   ` Anton Shepelev
  2024-10-16 23:58     ` segaloco via TUHS
@ 2024-10-17  3:57     ` Chris Hanson
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread
From: Chris Hanson @ 2024-10-17  3:57 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Anton Shepelev; +Cc: tuhs

On Oct 16, 2024, at 4:34 PM, Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> So it was not an arbitrary decision by Caldera to use the
> original BSD license?  Can they have used the modern three-
> clause version with equal ease?

It was almost certainly *not* an arbitrary decision, and it is reasonable to assume that Caldera’s lawyers were quite aware of the variety of Open Source software licenses in existence at the time they made this decision.

  -- Chris


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Can Ancient Unix be relicensed?
  2024-10-16 22:30 [TUHS] Can Ancient Unix be relicensed? Anton Shepelev
  2024-10-16 22:55 ` [TUHS] " Warner Losh
@ 2024-10-17  4:01 ` Chris Hanson
  2024-10-17 13:51   ` Ron Natalie
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread
From: Chris Hanson @ 2024-10-17  4:01 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Anton Shepelev; +Cc: tuhs

On Oct 16, 2024, at 3:30 PM, Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> The incompatibilty is due entirely to the infamous third
> clause about adverising.  Three years prior to Caldera's
> release of old Unix code, The Berkley Univercity removed
> this clause, producing the GNU-compatible modified BSD
> License:

There’s no such entity as The Berkeley University. It’s the University of California at Berkeley, one of many parts of the University of California system. This may be important if you’re trying to look up things in some databases, for example you may get hits that matter for “University of California” because the “at Berkeley” isn’t always added.

  -- Chris


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Can Ancient Unix be relicensed?
  2024-10-17  4:01 ` Chris Hanson
@ 2024-10-17 13:51   ` Ron Natalie
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread
From: Ron Natalie @ 2024-10-17 13:51 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Chris Hanson, Anton Shepelev; +Cc: tuhs

The code is marked "Property of the Regents of the University of 
California."    I was amused when I visited the campus years ago and 
found the same thing on the “no trespassing” signs on the building 
doors.



------ Original Message ------
From "Chris Hanson" <cmhanson@eschatologist.net>
To "Anton Shepelev" <anton.txt@gmail.com>
Cc tuhs@tuhs.org
Date 10/17/2024 12:01:10 AM
Subject [TUHS] Re: Can Ancient Unix be relicensed?
>
>There’s no such entity as The Berkeley University. It’s the University of California at Berkeley, one of many parts of the University of California system. This may be important if you’re trying to look up things in some databases, for example you may get hits that matter for “University of California” because the “at Berkeley” isn’t always added.
>
>   -- Chris
>

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2024-10-17 13:51 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 7+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
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2024-10-16 22:30 [TUHS] Can Ancient Unix be relicensed? Anton Shepelev
2024-10-16 22:55 ` [TUHS] " Warner Losh
2024-10-16 23:34   ` Anton Shepelev
2024-10-16 23:58     ` segaloco via TUHS
2024-10-17  3:57     ` Chris Hanson
2024-10-17  4:01 ` Chris Hanson
2024-10-17 13:51   ` Ron Natalie

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