Subject: RE: Greetings, news, etc. from Dion

From: "Dion L. Johnson II" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 20:17:12 -0800

PS: Another guy who knows some Unix history is Peter Salus.  You know him?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Warren Toomey [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 6:34 PM
> To: Dion L. Johnson II
> Subject: Re: Greetings, news, etc. from Dion
> 
> > Your invitation is very kind.  Maybe someday I will visit Australia; I
> don't
> > know.  I visited my cousin in England a couple years ago and thoroughly
> > enjoyed it.  (She's married to Sir Gordon Hobday, so now I guess I am
> > related to the nobility (by marriage, if not by blood).)  I like the
> idea of
> > visiting countries where I have some slight chance of understanding the
> > native language.  ;-)
> 
> Well, we speak funny here, and you can probably talk me into saying
> "G'day".
> 
> > Anyway, it sounds like you are doing well.  Keep up your good works, and
> let
> > me know what you can about the work with IBM (so far as is proper for
> you to
> > reveal).  I'm curious, at least, how this is going to progress.
> 
> Ok, well I'm reading www.groklaw.net every day to keep up on the latest
> legal and PR events. I've written a C code comparison tool, see
> http://minnie.tuhs.org/Programs/Ctcompare, which might help to see
> if there is really any SysV code in Linux. However, obtaining recent
> SysV code is not easy, but I've tried it on old SysV source and found
> nothing.
> 
> For IBM, I'm (one of?) their UNIX history people. I'm tracking down
> books, articles, papers etc. that explain UNIX methods and techniques.
> There's quite a lot of books, and some are recent too. IBM also want
> to find out how accessible was the source code generally, e.g. to
> students at unis etc. Of course, I can also give details on the
> geneaology of the source code itself.
> 
> Cheers,
> 	Warren

---

From: "Dion L. Johnson II" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 20:16:33 -0800

Well... you may (or may not) know that SCO used to have a SYS V source code
license for universities, perhaps as recent as 2000 or so.  And there are a
zillion old ATT source licenses, some maybe to universities besides
Berkeley.  I don't have copies of those licenses but they clearly are
intended to permit teaching of concepts and techniques.  

Don't forget Sun was allowing all kinds of licenses for Sys V.4, (Solaris)
their version, which was licensed from ATT.

One guy who knows a LOT about SCO licensing (and Caldera) is Bill Broderick.
Bill lives in NJ.  I don't know if he's still working for SCOG but he may
be, so approach him with care.  There are of course a number of other people
who know (knew) about the ATT, Novell, USL, SCO, and Caldera licensing over
the years.  And don't forget that many of the source code licenses had
provisions for sublicensing, and assorted T&C for allowing contractors and
other people to see the source.  

You might find some Sys V source code somewhere that is incorporated into
Linux - but damned little of it.  Of course, any at all may be a problem...
or maybe not, depending on how it got there.  The contributors, authors, IP
originators of Unix while not as many as Linux, are surely in the thousands
of programmers, over several decades.  Mike Davidson probably knows a little
about this.

Another interesting angle that bears investigation is to look into what
Linux code or IP may have found its way into SCO products!  Surely if there
was "technology transfer" it must have been a 2-way street.

The bottom line is that the legal envelope SCOG is trying to establish has a
million holes in it; it will never stand up such that they will be able to
extract royalties from everyone in the world.  (IMNSHO) At best, I think
they might get IBM to pay them some modest amount to just go away and shut
up.

All of this just between you and me, of course.  Not that there are any
secrets in what I say; I just don't want to get subpoenaed. 
-Dion

> > know.  I visited [redacted] a couple years ago and thoroughly
> > enjoyed it.  ([redacted] am
> > [redacted]  I like the
> idea of