Didn't Caldera/SCOX open source SYS V v7

Posted Aug 19, 2003 15:48 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054)
In reply to: Didn't Caldera/SCOX open source SYS V v7 by Spike
Parent article: Heise reports from SCO Forum

One problem: When Caldera opened the old Unix code, it was under a BSD-style copyright *with advertising clause*. This makes it incompatible with the GPL which that file in the Linux code claims to be under.

For those not familiar with this incompatibility: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html

So rather than a defense of "Caldera already opened the code", we have to go back to a defense of "that code has been out there for years anyway", which is the defense ESR has apparently been working to document for IBM. http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/05/25/1240238

Didn't Caldera/SCOX open source SYS V v7

Posted Aug 19, 2003 16:38 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] (1 responses)

Don't throw a fit over the advertising clause. I doubt the GPL copyright holders in the kernel would sue about it in this case. And I think they would be happy to give you a written exception to the GPL for its use. If it mattered.

Bruce

Didn't Caldera/SCOX open source SYS V v7

Posted Aug 19, 2003 17:20 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

Actually I shouldn't have emphasized the GPL incompatibility so much as the basic noncompliance with the Caldera license. See: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=105607172529951

On the other hand... http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=105611216326103

out there

Posted Aug 19, 2003 16:47 UTC (Tue) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (1 responses)

rfunk said, "we have to go back to a defense of 'that code has been out there for years anyway'".

That doesn't work: copyright isn't the same as trademark. Rather, we (IBM, really) will need to rely on the Regents of U.C vs. USL agreement granting U.C. full rights to that code as it appears in 2.11 BSD and up. UCB dropped the advertising clause requirement sometime after that. SCO has no proprietary rights to anything that appears in the last BSD release. This is not (as is often reported) because they didn't write much of it, but rather because they were in such hot water over having stolen huge amounts of BSD code, they had to give up rights to the code they had written, or lose the right to sell UNIX at all.

out there

Posted Aug 19, 2003 17:33 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

That doesn't work: copyright isn't the same as trademark.

Good point, though actually I was thinking trade secret, not trademark. And SCO has been including trade secret misappropriation as part of their accusations, though it's not clear to me which one they're thinking of with this code.

Rather, we (IBM, really) will need to rely on the Regents of U.C vs. USL agreement granting U.C. full rights to that code as it appears in 2.11 BSD and up.

Except as Bruce has pointed out, we don't know the full terms of the agreement. Are you saying that UC won full rights to everything in 2.11BSD? That's the first I've heard of that.

UCB dropped the advertising clause requirement sometime after that. SCO has no proprietary rights to anything that appears in the last BSD release.

Yes, but this code doesn't appear in the last BSD release. (2.11 is quite a bit older than 4.4.)