Subject: re: Who owns PWB/UNIX and Mini UNIX?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 21:26:33 -0400

PWB/UNIX and Mini UNIX preceded the 7th edition system.  They
were generated by organizations in Bell Labs outside our group,
and doubtless their licensing details (at the time) differed.
However, I can't see how they would have any different
descendant owner or any particular reason why they should be
treated differently from the research editions 1-7.  It's
pretty clear that Lucent as a corporation has absolutely no
interest in asserting any interest in this (i.e. claim ownership,
grant permission).  We're now fully separate from AT&T but it
is my guess that they are likely to take the same attitude
Of course I can speak even less for them than for
Lucent.

In other words, as far as I know SCO owns the game, and we
should be happy they're playing in it.  I don't know of anyone
likely to assert separate control of PWB or Mini Unix, so
whether you work on SCO about them is mainly a matter of
judgement about whether you're going back to the well too
many times.

I don't think I want to look over the proposed contract,
just because I've read more of them than is good for me,
but I do have one suggestion that worked for me at least
once (the Plan 9 shrink-wrap license).

Lawyers these days are behind the curve in these networked
days.  The original Plan 9 draft contract also had
a "one CPU" clause that was crazy for a distributed
system.  I managed to replace it with wording that just
prohibited putting the source in a place accessible by network
to non-licensees.

But this kind of negotiation is hard.

At any rate, I can't think of any reason why PWB and Mini
Unix shouldn't be treated the same as ed. 1-7.
32V is the same, by the way.  It's contemporaneous.

	Dennis