[Groff] Re: Liberal license for ancient UNIX sources

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Sunday,  1 December 2002 at 18:10:32 -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
>> Earlier this year it was changed to be a BSD-style license, so it's
>> definitely OK.
>
> On top of that, Dennis pretty much gave me permission to take over the
> maintainence of these docs.  He was a little cagey about it because of
> all the legalities involved but I was left with the impression that if
> the crap ever hit the fan he'd at least stand up and say that these it
> was a good thing that the docs were living and that he knew I was doing
> it.  While I'm not willing to do this as a BitMover thing, I am willing
> to take on the risk personally.  I know some of the Caldera people and
> I think they are quite reasonable folks so I am not that worried.

Well, Dennis doesn't own the license, of course, but as I said, it's
now out in the open.  I'm attaching the message that Dion Johnson sent
out in January.  Unfortunately, he has left Caldera/SCO now, and
there's nothing on their web site (well, I didn't find anything last
time I went looking) to confirm this, but given the people he sent it
to, I think it's pretty clear that we don't have to worry too much.
As Ruslan observed, most of the docco from 4.4BSD is now in the
FreeBSD source tree.  I don't think anybody's done anything about
getting it up to date, though.

Greg
--
See complete headers for address and phone numbers

--- Begin Message --- Subject: Liberal license for ancient UNIX sources Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 15:03:37 -0800 User-agent: Mutt/1.2.5i

Dear Warren, and friends,

I'm happy to let you know that Caldera International has placed
the ancient UNIX releases (V1-7 and 32V) under a "BSD-style" license.
I've attached a PDF of the license letter hereto.  Feel free to 
propogate it as you see fit.

I apologize that this has taken so long.  We do not have a well
regulated archive of these ancient releases, so we must depend
upon you UNIX enthusiasts, historians, and original authors to
help the community of interested parties figure out exactly what
is available, where, and how.

Many thanks to Warren Toomey, of PUPS, and to Caldera's Bill
Broderick, director of licensing services here.  Both of these
gentlemen were instrumental in making this happen.  And thanks
to our CEO, Ransom Love, whose vision for Caldera International
prescribes cooperation and mutual respect for the open source
communities.

Of course, there are thousands of other people who should be
acknowledged.  I regret I do not have time or wisdom to make
a list of them all, but maybe someone does, or has.

Anyway, here it is.  Feel free to write to us if you want to
understand more about how/why Caldera International has released
this code, or you have any other comments that we should hear.

Sincerely,

Dion L. Johnson II - address@hidden
Product Manager and one of many open source enthusiasts in Caldera Intl.

Paul Hatch - address@hidden
Public Relations Manager at Caldera International

ancient-source-all.pdf
Description: Text document

--- End Message ---