From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: imp@bsdimp.com (Warner Losh) Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2017 13:32:48 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Source code abundance? In-Reply-To: References: <23bbfb06-2de6-a9e1-0786-3f46d17c1192@kilonet.net> <32fbfeec-a3eb-796b-c243-5c6af478ea04@kilonet.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 1:28 PM, Clem Cole wrote: > Below > > On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 2:29 PM, Steve Nickolas wrote: >> >> On Wed, 1 Mar 2017, Henry Bent wrote: >> >>> My understanding is that System V source of any sort is not legal to >>> distribute. I believe that source exists and has been archived for at >>> least some variants of SVR1, SVR2, SVR3, and SVR4. >> >> >> Well, that's probably 95% true...the other 5% is Solaris. ;) > > > > Not a lawyer and don't play one TV or anywhere else.... > > > Some thoughts... > > 1.) UCB Regents Position per AT&T/BSDi/UCB - anything through 32V is public > domain (see groklaw) > 2.) All of Sun & IBM, bought out source licenses from AT&T with rights to do > anything.... IBM is based on the SVR3 license, Sun on SVR4 > 3.) IBM's license is the basis for the OSF/1 license > 4.) HP independently eventually gets is own bought out license, but I'm not > sure what it's based [need to google the old UNIGRAM/X or the like] > 5.) Sun takes SVR4 in and starts to add "Solaris features" to it (not going > to argue percentages here for the moment). > 6.) Sun open sources this code base... > > Now some questions.... > > From the above, one could argue that set of code included in Solaris from > the SysV linage was made public by step 6. > > I have seen argument that anything through SVR3 is public because of the > actions of IBM, HP, and SUN when the code was bought out; but I have not > seen a definitive action like step 6 that infer all of SVR3 was public. I would be skeptical of that assertion. Copyright law doesn't allow one to gain rights for earlier versions of a work they got rights for, except to the extent that the earlier work is wholly included in the later work. Warner