[TUHS] Bell Labs Holmdel site coming down

[tfb@tfeb.org (Tim Bradshaw)]

On Thu, May 18, 2006 2:42 am, Wesley Parish wrote:

>
> I'm wondering if it wouldn't be possible to talk Novell into releasing
> the Unix SysVr* source code under some form of BSD/MIT X license following
> the coming evaporation of Societe Commerciel du Ondit - the SCOGroup
> Rumourmonging Machine.
>
>
> Then get OSF1-"lite" released following that.  Eating an elephant - one
> bite at a time.

I think the problem with all these `just open source it' schemes is that
they're simpler in theory than in practice.  In particular, in practice
someone has to go through the source of the system checking for everything
that might have been licensed from someone else and whose license
agreements might prohibit its release.  Few of those things will
(probably) have been kept track of, and the penalty for failure is that
some nasty residual company which now owns the stuff you licensed comes
down your throat.

For orphaned systems this is a lot of work for no obvious gain (it
wouldn't be orphaned if the organization that created it thought it had
much value to them).

A good example would probably be SunOS 4 - we already know that Sun are
quite interested in open sourcing stuff given OpenSolaris, but SunOS 4
hasn't been, presumably because it is full of stuff-they-don't-own and has
no commercial value at all.

--tim