[NCLUG] Breaking news! SCO is full of crap (big surprise)

[jbass at dmsd.com]

Sean Reifschneider <jafo at tummy.com> writes:
> On Tue, Aug 19, 2003 at 01:30:56PM -0600, jbass at dmsd.com wrote:
> >That completely ignores that assumption that many make that just because
> >some lines of old V7 code were released under BSD, many lines developed
> >for System V in the two decaded since are as well ... which is completely
> >false.

> I haven't seen anyone making that assumption.  I believe that the reason
> people are saying that the newer code is covered under the BSD license
> is because back in 2001-ish, Caldera released the code under the BSD
> license.

Lets get a few dates corrected here. The Lyons book is V6 code, as released
by AT&T in 1975. V7 was released in 1977 or 1978 (depending on who you talk
to ... several universities had early tapes).

Around 1995 I wrote and talked to Doug (SCO President at the time) and
suggested SCO release the original V7 PDP11 code with a BSD license.
Several others did as well .... and several years later it actually
happened.

That code has a lot of value, mostly historical and in education circles.
It's small, tight, concise code that works well ... and can be easily
understood by a junior systems programmer with minor training.

Nothing in the SCO filings seems to suggest that SCO is really concerned
about UNIX V7 code .... everything seems to reference UNIX code developed
in the last 15 years, all of which is derivative of V7.

John