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The Courts Government Operating Systems Software Unix News Your Rights Online BSD

1994 BSD/Unix Settlement Released On Groklaw 336

davidwr writes "Groklaw has the newly-released-previously-secret 1994 Berkeley/UNIX Systems Laboratories settlement which gave rise to BSD4.4(Lite) (as pdf and text with commentary). This may have an impact on the SCO vs. Linux war."
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1994 BSD/Unix Settlement Released On Groklaw

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  • War? (Score:4, Funny)

    by gatorflux ( 759239 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @05:03PM (#10938963)
    Is it really a war if one side never wins a battle?
    • by Anonymous Coward
      See subject.
    • Re:War? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by John Allsup ( 987 )
      It is quite possible to win the war having never won a battle. One side may win every battle, but be forced to concede defeat due to unforseen circumstances (vacuously, this may happen in the case where no overt battles are actually fought, as in the cold war.) [For more details, see Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War']
      • Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Spain, Brasil, Argentina, even in the US during the McArthism days. Lots of people died. Lots of people were deprived of their rights. These were overt battles to me. Ah, you meant overt like "Bam! I am attacking you because you are a communist" and not just "Bam!". Ok.
      • Re:War? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by RenQuanta ( 3274 )
        It is quite possible to win the war having never won a battle.
        Actually, there is a good example of this in the American war For independence - Gen. Green, an American leader in the fight for the South,lost every battle he fought, and yet he won the South. He did this by forcing the British to chase his forces deep inland, away from the coastal areas where the British troops were easily restocked or supplies by the Britist Navy. This forced the British forces to turn to the American populace for supplies
        • Re:War? (Score:2, Informative)

          by craw ( 6958 )
          While General Greene was not present, his subordinate General Morgan overwhelmingly won the battle of Cowpens. Morgan then retreated on his own towards Virginia and was pursued by Cornwallis; this pursuit was futile.

          Greene did "lose" at Guilford, however, the British suffered sufficient casualties to force them to return to their safer coastal areas.

          British brutality towards those favorable to the rebels (who they considered traitors) probably did gain them many new friends in the South. Indeed, they did
      • Re:War? (Score:2, Offtopic)

        by Zangief ( 461457 )
        The Napoleon campaign in Russia. Although is not completely clear who won on Borodino, the final battle before Napoleon conquered Moscow. Since the Russian left the battlefield, they could be considered losers, but the French substained big loses, almost a pyrric victory.
        --
        Un Cuento sobre Miguel y Lucifer [uchile.cl]
    • Re:War? (Score:5, Funny)

      by DJTodd242 ( 560481 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @05:26PM (#10939098) Homepage
      I dunno. How is that war on Drugs, and the war on terrah going for you guys? :)
      • USofA lost both. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by hummassa ( 157160 )
        Drugs exist. They won't cease existing. Lost this one.

        Terror is something that exists. It won't cease existing. Oops, lost that one too.

        You can fight a war against some people; you cannot fight a war against all the people.
        • You remember?

          ...
          Sir, my need is sore.
          Spirits that I've cited
          My commands ignore
          ...
          The Sorcerer's Apprentice - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
        • Re:USofA lost both. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by seanadams.com ( 463190 ) * on Sunday November 28, 2004 @09:11PM (#10940031) Homepage
          Drugs exist. They won't cease existing. Lost this one.

          No, we (they?) haven't lost this one. This isn't a war that you just "stop fighting" when you've "won". The drugs will keep fighting to exist, so society has to keep fighting the war forever if society chooses not to have drugs everywhere.

          I used to not grok the war on drugs. I've done a few "light" drugs myself and never understood what the big deal was. Last April I thought I was getting a great deal on a house until I found out why the seller had priced it $30K below market - the house next door was infested with dealers and users. Guys doing crazy uppers - out shouting at each other every night at the top of their lungs until 4AM, going "MOTHERFUCKER MOTHERFUCKING UP IN MY SHIT SO I CHOKED THE BITCH OUT" and stupid nonsenese so loud it would shake my (closed, heavy 2-pane) windows. Then there were the fights. Then there were were ODs. That's when I learned real quick why we have a war on drugs. BTW this is in Campbell, CA - not the most expensive homes in the bay area, but certainly not the ghetto!

          For months I talked to other neighbors who were all too afriad to give their names when the called the police - they were afraid they'd get shot, or their houses burned down if they complained. I'd call the cops but they always said they couldn't go in on a noise complaint, no matter how many.

          So I tracked down the local drug enforcement czar, and he told me what to do. Keep a log, write down license plates, call the cops every time it gets out of hand. So I did, and I gave my name every time I called. It didn't help.

          Finally I discovered that public records could point me to the owner of the rented property (the police and the occupants had refused to tell me). I started writing letters and telling the owner everything that happened - turned out the owners were the parents of one of the occupants. They'd given up on parenting and bought their son a house because they couldn't keep him under control and they wouldn't throw him out on the street. Great.

          I researched the law and learned about the seizure process and how the owners could lsoe everything by letting it continue, and that neighbors could sue for noise. I bluntly informed them of all this, and finally it looks like the creeps are moving out - 8 months of turmoil later. Finally I have peace and safety.

          You will not understand the war on drugs until you've had to fight it yourself. Only then will you see why it's a war that we are going to keep fighting forever as long as we as a society decide we don't want to be around the stuff.
          • by cduffy ( 652 ) <charles+slashdot@dyfis.net> on Monday November 29, 2004 @12:08AM (#10940699)
            Fine, drugs are bad. That doesn't mean it's a war.

            A "war" is, generally speaking, a temporary situation which warrants the application of special powers during its (finite) duration.

            The "war on drugs" doesn't have a finite duration. As you acknowledge, there is no achievable victory condition where we can all go home. Temporary "war powers" make no sense in this situation. Consequently, it's not a war, just another law-enforcement function, and calling it (thinking of it as) anything else invites bad decision-making.
            • it's not a war, just another law-enforcement function

              Now you're just arguing the semantics of the word "war".

              dictionary.com [reference.com] defines it as anything but brief... actually "often prolonged" and "A concerted effort or campaign to combat or put an end to something considered injurious: the war against acid rain."
          • And you do not grok now. No offense inteded.

            You made the creeps move out, you did not make them stop. You swept the problem under the rug. And the problem is: making drugs illegal is what causes the situation you lived. If they went to the pharmacy to get their fix, they wouldn't have to gather together in the "place". Believe me, I know. I worked two years as a para in a DA's office. The big drug guys profit huge BECAUSE the stuff is illegal. If pfizer and johnsons sold coke it would be 10 times cheaper a
      • Re:War? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) *
        Interestingly, we're losing them both.

        Perhaps it's because neither of them are 'conventional' wars, and we're not used to winning wars with anything other than bombs.

      • Re:War? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by swillden ( 191260 ) * <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Sunday November 28, 2004 @06:46PM (#10939444) Journal

        How is that war on Drugs, and the war on terrah going for you guys?

        I thought that was the "War on Terra".

        You know, a shorthand description of Bush's environmental policies.

        • Re:War? (Score:2, Funny)

          by swillden ( 191260 ) *

          Insightful?

          Hmmm. I think this is the first time I've been annoyed by a *positive* moderation of one of my posts.

  • Great to read (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ShawnX ( 260531 )
    It's pretty interesting to read. A lot of files are mentioned in the settlement.
    • The person I feel sorry for is the poor so and so who had to list all the entries in the 17 pages comprising Exhibit C. That guy/gal should get a medal.
      • I hope that was meant as a joke. A Unix admin, of course, would just have run find /usr/src -name '*.h' -o '*.c' -print (the -print may or may not be needed--I believe it's not actually needed on BSD).
  • Right, but... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by adun ( 127187 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @05:05PM (#10938973)
    ...does any of this in any way impact the slew of child BSD's out there? I would think Open/Net/Free have more to lose from some "revelation" due to this document than Linux.
    • No (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ColourlessGreenIdeas ( 711076 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @05:25PM (#10939095)
      The current BSDs are all forks of the version of BSD that was released to comply with this ruling. Which doesn't include the restricted files (those in Exhibit A) We've always known they were clean. We just hadn't previously known what it was about them that made them clean.
      • Re:No (Score:2, Insightful)

        Another thing part of the suit, is the counter suit were Berkeley claimed that AT&T had stolen their code, placing new code from BSD and putting it into AT&T's system, w/o credit. So, If SCO's code turns out to be unix code that really was BSD code in the first place, things could get very interesting.
    • no (Score:5, Insightful)

      by twitter ( 104583 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @05:30PM (#10939116) Homepage Journal
      You ask:

      does any of this in any way impact the slew of child BSD's out there?

      The answer is no. Nobody but SCO has anything to worry about. As Grocklaw astutely notes:

      Now we know why SCO keeps telling us the case is "just a contract" case, why it has a penchant for suing only those who are, or were, their licensees, and why it sued IBM instead of Red Hat. USL preserves its rights against licensees under the license agreements. I see no expanded rights against third parties who are not licensees, just the preexisting right to try to sue them, with the same likely outcome that USL experienced when it tried to sue the University and BSDi, using the same lame copyright claims that the judge back then found so unconvincing.

      SCO owns nothing useful and never has. They have yet to show any infringement by IBM nor will they ever. The whole thing is FUD, funded by your friends at M$ and a pump and dump scheme, in short fraud and anti-competitive fraud. I hope someone goes to jail for it.

    • by pikine ( 771084 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @05:53PM (#10939226) Journal
      If you look at the BSD family tree here [tribug.org], you'd see that at one point in time, all Free/Net/Open BSD changed to use the codebase from 4.4BSD Lite, the unencumbered version.
  • history (Score:5, Informative)

    by northcat ( 827059 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @05:06PM (#10938977) Journal
    a little history [wikipedia.org]
  • by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @05:07PM (#10938984) Homepage Journal
    These corporations take their feuds into the courts, where we pay taxes for them to produce justice. Then they settle, because the actual trial completion costs too much and is too risky for their own investment in justice. So we get no return on our investment in justice, but the corporations do, without the full cost or risk. They should have to at least register their settlement terms, especially since they'll next expect our courts to enforce them. The judge should decide whether they can keep the settlement secret, and for how long, so we can at least get some contribution to the justice we're funding. Otherwise, we're just funding expensive corporate negotiations.
    • by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @05:20PM (#10939064)
      Depends upon the relative size and heft of the combatants. Between a Microsoft and a one-man garage software shop the law is a blunt instrument used to beat someone to a bloody pulp. But that doesn't usually cost much court time (Burst not withstanding.) Between two more evenly-matched players ... you're pretty much dead on.

      Carrying it a step further, I'm leaning towards the idea that, once you've filed a lawsuit, an out-of-court settlement should no longer be possible. Why should it? If two companies can't agree before going to court, why should the courts be used to pressure one side or the other to give in? You're right, that's not justice and it is an abuse of the court system. Either you drop the case (and take your lumps) or pursue it to the bitter end and accept what the justice system hands you. If that's not worth the risk, then make a deal before going in.
      • by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @05:32PM (#10939133) Homepage Journal
        Even a one-man garage SW shop, with the facts on their side, can offer a very expensive challenge to Microsoft. And they sometimes win - which is a reason they can sometimes raise the money as investment in their victory. But I'm talking about the costs *to taxpayers* like us. If MS and other companies want to fight, and it's expensive, that's their problem. But these corporations are wasting so much of our government budgets on their negotiations that it's a DoS attack on our system, without much cost or risk to them.

        Civil suits are ways to remedy damages between citizens, so litigants should be able to "cut their losses" when Justice is going against them. Their active participation is required for our adversarial process of justice to work, but either side might not be in position to continue the process past a certain point, compared with settling. But, as we apparently agree, the public shouldn't be cheated of everything in that case. Their settlements are the only product available, and that should be used for the public benefit as much as is just, as decided by the judge in the case.
        • by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @08:05PM (#10939786)
          Well, I was speaking primarily about the person or group filing the lawsuit. If you sue, you should either have to accept whatever justice the system hands you (if you choose to go that far) or simply drop the case. The problem, as I see it, is that the cost of mounting a defense is, in and of itself, a punitive measure regardless of the outcome of a case. I don't know, I'm hardly a lawyer but it just seems to me that a settlement shouldn't be forced just because someone can't afford a protracted defense. And if the entity filing a suit doesn't really believe that the case can be won on its merits but is simply using the expense of a legal defense as a tool to coerce the defendant ... that's a problem.
          • The current legal system was crafted to make Lawyers extremely rich. Therefore it will never EVER change because judges, are [GASP] Lawyers, and certianly will protect their brethren's money flow.

            out of EVERY lawsuit the Lawyers make almost all of the money in the lawsuit or settlement.

            The only way to fix it is to make it illegal for a Lawyer to become a judge.
        • When was the last time a one-man garage SW shop won a case against MS? I know of cases microsoft has lost. With a few very notable exceptions they were against IP companies that were fairly well financed for litigation, and perhaps offered a few products on the side (like SCO really).
      • Carrying it a step further, I'm leaning towards the idea that, once you've filed a lawsuit, an out-of-court settlement should no longer be possible. Why should it? If two companies can't agree before going to court, why should the courts be used to pressure one side or the other to give in?

        The court often directs the opposing parties to reach a settlement. If one party doesn't try or negotiate in good faith, then they are in trouble.

      • If two companies can't agree before going to court, why should the courts be used to pressure one side or the other to give in?

        Change of ownership can get one of the sides to be more agreeable. IIRC, this is exactly what happened with the USL vs BSD suit. USL was bought by Novell, who decided they wanted to settle. I believe a Novell executive was quoted saying something like "Better to compete in the marketplace than the courts"
    • by bstone ( 145356 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @05:58PM (#10939252)
      Worse than that, with sealed settlements and sealed documents filed in the court cases, the rest of the people who are affected by the proceedings have no way of knowing how they were affected. Rulings on the ownership of code and agreements between the various parties to lawsuits leave the rest of the world unable to know how to react.

      Can I contribute to BSD code, or does someone else own it who can sue me for derivitive works? Can I legally use various open source software, or has it been decided that the company who allowed me that option has conceded that they really didn't own it in a sealed agreement? Do I owe SCO extortion fees because of something AT&T and BSD decided in a sealed settlement (SCO seems to think so, and somehow they seem to have the documents)? Has SCO, as they have claimed, given the courts proof of their ownership of Linux code in sealed documents? Can I be held liable for not knowing the contents of those documents?

      As soon as something affects third parties, whether it's a settlement agreement, a court decision, or documents filed with the courts, it should not be allowed to be sealed and hidden from the other parties who are affected.

      • by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @07:48PM (#10939717) Homepage Journal
        Can you think of any other mechanism, other than registering the settlement with the judge, who decides whether it (or parts) can be sealed, for how long? And if sealed, how does someone unseal it to stop someone from violating it? And how do I, a third party, even violate an agreement between the original two parties, to which I am not a party, let alone even seen? How can we combine practical disclosure and the right of private parties to retain commercially useful secrecy?
  • by Ingolfke ( 515826 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @05:11PM (#10939004) Journal
    Exhibit G is a death certificate for BSD!
  • Big Difference (Score:5, Interesting)

    by miyako ( 632510 ) <miyako AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday November 28, 2004 @05:16PM (#10939034) Homepage Journal
    It seems to me that there is a pretty big difference between this case and SCO's case against IBM. It looks like in this case, it was admitted that BSD contained some code that both parties admitted to, but the debate was over whether or not that code was ok to have in there. SCO on the other hand seems to be claiming ownership of code that may not even be there in the first place, or maybe I just missed something.
    • You are missing something. SCO hasn't said this explicitly, but here's what they are implying:

      "SCO owns the concept of Unix. Linux is a successful Unix-like operating system. SCO sales are down. Linux has stolen the Unix concepts that we own. Look how similar each OS is implemented. Let's try to sue someone."
    • by Herschel Cohen ( 568 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @05:35PM (#10939145) Journal
      The University of California did not agree with the USL contention of ownership of certain files. Indeed, they were quite obviously dubious of the claim. Instead they said if USL wished to pursue other parties it would play no role in their defense until it came to searching U.C. records.

    • by ColourlessGreenIdeas ( 711076 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @05:35PM (#10939146)
      SCO may or may not be claiming this is a contract case, not a copyright case. It's a bit hard to follow as their arguments are a bit incoherent. (Read a lot of Groklaw to understand this point, especialy stuff relating to IBM's request for a partial summary judgement on their 10th counterclaim) If it is about copyright, SCO appear to be claiming copyright on IBM's extensions to AIX, some of which probably are in Linux, but everybody except SCO seems to think that SCO has no rights over that code so it's OK. Which is much the same as your summary of the BSD/USL case.
  • by waldoj ( 8229 ) <waldo@NOSpAM.jaquith.org> on Sunday November 28, 2004 @05:49PM (#10939213) Homepage Journal
    A little history lesson.

    For those of us accustomed to Unix and looking to run it on our desktops in the early 1990s, we found that there were very few options at the time. The popular choice was BSD, but those of us who read Boardwatch and kept up with the choice few Usenet groups knew only that there was some kind of a BSD lawsuit that made it bad to use. The details were fuzzy, but we thought that BSD would be a dead end.

    Instead, we used Linux. It was much less popular, and way underpowered (compared to BSD), but it was unencumbered by lawsuits and would let us run all of those /<-rad commands like gopher wiretap.spies.com and zmodem phrack_15.tgz, which is what I and my fellow teenaged geeks were really looking to do. Some of my friends with whom I chose to use Linux, rather than BSD, have gone onto greatness, notably Nat Friedman of Ximian/Novell. (I, however, am an utter fucking nobody, which is fine. :)

    I'll wager that, if not for the FUD that came of this lawsuit, BSD would be the OS of choice for geeks today. Instead, Linux is far more popular -- I continue to use it a decade later, with the vague guilt that I would be cooler if I were running BSD. I wonder to what degree the SCO FUD is similarly affecting the choice of Linux today?

    -Waldo Jaquith
    • One wonders (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28, 2004 @06:04PM (#10939279)
      What with Solaris's recent still-mysterious "open sourcing", the large amount of cash infused into SCO by Sun Microsystems, the increasingly common yet always vague claims by Sun executives that "intellectual property issues" will become of increasing importance in software development in the near future, and the strange repeated claims by Sun executives that Linux "wouldn't have happened" if Solaris had been "open sourced" five years ago...

      One wonders if Sun Microsystems might be hoping that the SCO suit will drive people from Linux to Solaris the same way that the USL suit drove people from BSD to Linux.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      The difference is that the USL/BSD "FUD" was a lot more substantial than SCO's fantasyland FUD. Had this case gone forward, there was the real likelyhood that BSD Unix would be removed from the market (or require ridiclous licence fees).

      Basically, the BSD case was settled because USL was sold to Novell and Ray Noorda was feeling charitable. At that time BSD4.4 was considered to be ridiclously obsolete ("dying") when compared to SVR4 UnixWare.

      The real tragedy in all this is that that Novell didn't sell you
    • You tell me. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by twitter ( 104583 )
      those of us who read Boardwatch and kept up with the choice few Usenet groups knew only that there was some kind of a BSD lawsuit that made it bad to use. The details were fuzzy, but we thought that BSD would be a dead end. ... Instead, we used Linux. It was much less popular, and way underpowered (compared to BSD), but it was unencumbered by lawsuits ... I'll wager that, if not for the FUD that came of this lawsuit, BSD would be the OS of choice for geeks today.

      By what you say, that would be a bad wager.

      • by waldoj ( 8229 ) <waldo@NOSpAM.jaquith.org> on Sunday November 28, 2004 @06:40PM (#10939426) Homepage Journal
        According to you, more people were using BSD despite the lawsuit.

        More people were using BSD because Linux barely existed. The Linux kernel hadn't even gone 1.0. It was under 1MB. It wasn't a matter of the lawsuit -- it was that Linux was unknown.

        Moreover, you do not consider the very real philosophical difference between the BSD and GNU people.

        What you mean is that I did not (past tense) consider the philosophical differences. And you're right -- I was totally uninterested. We didn't have "open source" -- the phrase didn't exist. We had free software. Both BSD and Linux were free. Both had source to edit. What teenager cared about some contract?

        I'll wager that many of your peers made the choice based on the philisophical grounds.

        My older friends surely chose based on philosophical grounds -- those old enough to be in any way interested in IP and related freedoms. I was writing for 2600 and decompiling and modifying MS-DOS for fun -- wasn't no contract going to stop me from doing whatever I wanted with an OS, or so I figured.

        But you were the man on the spot, you tell me, was it impending abuse and the desire to not aid the abusers as obvious then as it is now?

        I'm afraid that I'm not sure that I understand your question. But perhaps it would answer your question to restate my premise: we had no idea what the deal was with the lawsuit. Abuse schmabuse -- we figured that BSD might go away (whatever that would constitute), so why bet on a losing horse?

        -Waldo Jaquith
        • On one hand you say:

          I'll wager that, if not for the FUD that came of this lawsuit, BSD would be the OS of choice for geeks today. ,

          implying the lawsuit made a difference in adaptation. On the other hand you say:

          More people were using BSD because Linux barely existed. and we figured that BSD might go away (whatever that would constitute), so why bet on a losing horse?

          as if the lawsuit made no difference. Which is it?

          Now I'll clarify what I mean by abusers. The people at USL tried to gain exclusive

      • Since the arrival of Mac OS X, BSD has become the biggest desktop UNIX variant on the planet. Yes, even bigger than Linux.
        Jordan Hubbards' keynote

        If you take Linux as a unique movement, then it is bigger than FreeBSD, but if you take each distribution (per Netcraft's Linux OS detection statistics), then FreeBSD has more users than Red Hat.
        Advocacy speech by Murray Stokely

        ONLamp.com: Inside EuroBSDCon 2004 [onlamp.com]
    • The popular choice was BSD, but those of us who read Boardwatch and kept up with the choice few Usenet groups knew only that there was some kind of a BSD lawsuit that made it bad to use.

      You hit the nail on the head here. It was late 1992 and I was unhappy with Windows 3.1 (duh). While looking around for something better, I saw this new Linux thing along with some BSD Unix's. I knew that there was some lawsuit going on with BSD so I downloaded Linux and haven't looked back since.

    • I was thinking that I had read that the uncertainty around the lawsuit was why Alan Cox was using Linux instead of BSD, but I did a Google search and it turns out that Alan Cox choose Linux over BSD was because it would run on his FPU-less PC.
      http://www.linuxhq.com/lnxlists/linux-kernel/lk_99 05_01/msg00578.html [linuxhq.com]
  • Finially? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MrLint ( 519792 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @06:44PM (#10939439) Journal
    (bear with me here please)

    "Finially, we have legally obtained the settlement agreement [PDF] between USL and The Regents of the University of California....."

    A finial is "2 : a crowning ornament or detail (as a decorative knob)"

    The reason I bring this up is most of the time I hear the word finial is that thing at the bottom of a bannister on a staircase on on a fence, and what happens when a burglar impales themselves on one (or more).

    So if SCO is the burglar and the settlement papers are a finial.. well let the impaling begin!
  • Apple & OS X (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xirtam_work ( 560625 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @06:46PM (#10939445)
    Sorry to sound like an idiot, but would all this have any affect on Apple with their BSD based OS X?
    • Re:Apple & OS X (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28, 2004 @08:49PM (#10939955)
      OSX is a hybrid with BSD and Mach code infused in. next purchased the appropriate rights to use the code years ago (80s). More recent code comes from the freebsd and netbsd projects which the document says are safe.
      • Re:Apple & OS X (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Goo.cc ( 687626 )
        The only problem currently effecting Apple is its claim that Mac OS X is Unix. It isn't, unless it meets all the specifications of the Open Group, who current owns the Unix trademark.

        Apple, of course, is contending that the term Unix has become a generic term and it not longer meets the needs of trademark protection.
  • by Kalak ( 260968 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @07:09PM (#10939534) Homepage Journal
    In case Groklaw is asked to take this down, anyone want to post it on their favorite P2P application? I've only used bittorrent to publish, and I don't thing iBiblio/Groklaw needs help with a 1MB file.

    I tried to post the full text as an AC, but it's not getting in, since it's probably to big at 119k for the edited text.
  • PJ quit the OSRM (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28, 2004 @07:23PM (#10939599)
    Another important groklaw article that hasn't seen the light on slashdot is worth mentioning here. [groklaw.net]

    SCO has been having a road show in the UK. As it happens, a Groklaw reader attended, and this individual reported to me that one of the speakers, in a talk about intellectual property risks in Linux and how you shouldn't use it in business as a result, mentioned me by name, and twisted my relationship with OSRM to say that it proved that I believe there are substantial IP risks in Linux.

    That is nonsense, of course. It actually means the opposite, if anything. I was never involved in the insurance side of OSRM anyway. But I take it seriously that they are using my work relationship for FUD purposes. There was also the Ballmer FUD to factor in. I have thought about it carefully for a couple of days and brainstormed some. There is a scripture that says the heart is desperate, meaning it wants what it wants and tries to find a way to justify what it wants, and I'm only human. No one likes to separate themselves from an income stream if they don't have to. I tried to justify to myself maintaining the status quo. The FUD is unfair, but it doesn't matter. FUD is always unfair. One must simply deal with it. In analyzing my choices, I kept coming back to the same thing. If my working for OSRM is doing harm by creating FUD possibilities, I need to remove that issue. Money is nice, but integrity is everything.

    So, I have resigned.

    OSRM were extremely gracious about it. Down the road, when there's nothing left of SCO but an old blues song, perhaps we'll be able to work together again. But for now, I decided to try to find other work.

    I have spoken with ibiblio about the UNIX/Linux Ownership History Timeline, and they have kindly agreed to host it. I love ibiblio.

  • SCO SUCKS (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Sunday November 28, 2004 @11:36PM (#10940604)
    As it turns out, on page 198 you can see that UNIX Systems Laboratories agreed that the named sections could be used by the BSDs because as it turned out they, USL, stole stuff from BSD without permission... As it turned out, both sides had borrowed code from both sides.

    In the case of $C0, those peaces of garbage stole code from Linux and misappropriated it into their software. A theft did NOT occur in the opposite direction.

    And they're not very confident that they're going to win, those idiots. They just capped the lawyers' payments. THEY ARE GONNA LOSE! Nanny nanny boo boo.

Garbage In -- Gospel Out.

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