Re: [TUHS] SunOS code?

[Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling@kev009.com>]

The effects of copyright on abandonware have been discussed pretty
widely in other communities.  The primary issue is the contracts and
right don't simply expire and it's rare for a company to completely
shutter (i.e. assets including these copyrights are acquired or given
to creditors).

Oracle would need to establish that they have providence over the
files and code, and that exceptions for Novel and other code were
covered by the OpenSolaris rights reviews.  I imagine it might cost
low hundreds of thousands of dollars to do lawyers being what they are
and commercial *nix being such a melting pot of sources.  Since there
is no conceivable revenue stream and Oracle isn't much for goodwill I
am highly skeptical.

Sun releasing OpenSolaris when they finally did and under the CDDL was
pretty tone deaf to what was going on in the market with Linux, but
you have to admire the amount of contract review and legal work that
must have taken.

Regards,
Kevin


On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 2:34 PM, Noel Chiappa <jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
>     > From: Warner Losh
>
>     > The trouble, as I was given to understand when I worked at Solbourne,
>     > was that ... There were a number of third party bits and pieces in there
>     > that could not be relicensed ... if there are other IP issues, not
>     > limited ... It's that quagmire that efforts like this will run up
>     > against.
>
> Oh, we'll just ask Oracle for a license 'for all parts of SunOS for which they
> have the ability to grant a licence'.
>
> There's no way I'd want them to have to chase down all the corner cases,
> that's just a way to guarantee it will never happen. I'd want to ask for the
> bare minimum of time/effort on their part.
>
> Anything above that, probably the SCCS stuff would be next on the priority
> list, sounds like.
>
>         Noel