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   rqsd (rq@borg.social)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Mar-2023 18:52:40 JST rqsd

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   • 翠星石
   • niconiconi

   @niconiconi@mk.absturztau.be @Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com The technical copyright holders don't even care. Novell was acquired by and merged into Attachmate, itself acquired by and merged into Micro Focus, itself acquired by OpenText. People have repeatedly tried to get any kind of reaction from Micro Focus about the UNIX copyright situation, be it by e-mail, their forums or bloody registered mail. The best you could get was "Did you mean SUSE?" before they got rid of SUSE. There definitely are sleeping dogs in this general area.

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     niconiconi (niconiconi@mk.absturztau.be)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Mar-2023 18:52:42 JST niconiconi

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     @rq@borg.social @Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com I now found the entire situation is totally as clear as mud. Both Wikipedia and The Unix Heritage Society claimed that historical Research Unix versions and BSD derivatives (a.k.a Ancient Unix) are now licensed under 4-clause BSD. And many people, including me, believed that.
     
     Now this appears to be clearly incorrect (though I'm not worrying about contaminating my brain by reading the code, since the situation is so confusing that not even technical copyright holders are able to make a claim)... The true situation is totally beyond our grasp. Someone needs to relaunch GrokLaw and write some articles about it...

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     rqsd (rq@borg.social)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Mar-2023 18:52:43 JST rqsd

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     • niconiconi

     @niconiconi@mk.absturztau.be @Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com Note that you also need to take account international private law. It's possible that in some jurisdictions, the actual coming-into-existence of the copyright on the code is subject to US rules and it may thus be public domain (due to missing the copyright notice), whereas in others, it may be subject to domestic rules (where perhaps the rules of "you wrote it, you own it" always applied).
     
     I can conceivably imagine a situation where some Ancient UNIX versions' copyrights are enforceable only in certain countries, which honestly amuses me a bit, but I'd need to research this in detail to be absolutely sure. I'm kind of surprised that nobody wrote anything about that yet though.

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     niconiconi (niconiconi@mk.absturztau.be)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Mar-2023 18:52:44 JST niconiconi

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     @Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com I learned something new today. Apparently some early Research Unix versions from AT&T were originally published in the US, pre-Berne, AND with NO copyright notice. AT&T later tried to cover it up by adding them retroactively but it was exposed during the USL v. BSDi lawsuit. So it's likely that at least some ancient Unix code by AT&T is effectively public domain today.
     
     But to make things even more confusing for everyone, later Unix included third-party code from many sources, including code from UCL, UNSW, and UCLA/BSD, which may still be copyrightable, but nobody clearly knows which is which anymore...
     
     Apparently AT&T's lawyer couldn't decide whether software was copyrightable, for a while they added copyright notices and later they removed it (including third-party copyright notices!) and tried to use trade secret laws instead to enforce Unix's proprietary status (and by definition trade secret is not published), eventually they added copyright notices back again. This Unix mess was messier than I expected...

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     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Mar-2023 18:52:45 JST 翠星石

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     • niconiconi
     @niconiconi >All BSD derivatives can be called proper Unix systems.
     Yes, they were derived from Unix code, but as Unix is a trademark, you're only legally permitted to call certified systems "Unix".
     
     >for its credit, did release all AT&T Unix source up to V7 as free software.
     As a court determined, SCO didn't and does NOT hold the copyrights of Unix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group%2C_Inc._v._Novell%2C_Inc.
     
     Thus, the copyright "release" by SCO was completely invalid.
     
     Novell hasn't make any copyright "releases" as far as I am aware, but they don't seem to be interested in pursuing the matter as of up to now.
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     niconiconi (niconiconi@mk.absturztau.be)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Mar-2023 18:52:47 JST niconiconi

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     @Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com All BSD derivatives can be called proper Unix systems. BSD was based on a VAX port (UNIX/32V) of original Unix V7 source from Bell Labs. Though, its code was put under independent development and later deviated significantly from AT&T. The SunOS itself was also a BSD derivative with proprietary modifications.
     
     Also don't forget that Caldera (aka the "evil" SEO company, which was not the same as the "original" SEO company), as evil as it might have been for making false copyright claims on Linux code, for its credit, did release all AT&T Unix source up to V7 as free software.

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     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Mar-2023 18:52:48 JST 翠星石

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     • niconiconi
     @niconiconi I'm not aware of any free version of Unix - only free Unix-likes.
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     niconiconi (niconiconi@mk.absturztau.be)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Mar-2023 18:52:49 JST niconiconi

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     @Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com You could run free Unix on them too. Even the non-free ones were likely running the same free Apache web servers.

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     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Mar-2023 18:52:50 JST 翠星石

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     • niconiconi
     @niconiconi You had 0 defenses against the master of such proprietary software though?
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     niconiconi (niconiconi@mk.absturztau.be)'s status on Wednesday, 08-Mar-2023 18:52:51 JST niconiconi

     In the 2000s, running vulnerable Unix software on Alpha or SPRAC servers was perhaps an effective defense from script kiddies. Because their shellcode only works on x86.