[TUHS] Re: Can Ancient Unix be relicensed?

[segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org>]

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.