Date: 09 Oct 2002 10:49:50 -0700 From: swear@attbi.com (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Congrats to Brett Glass for new BSD history article Message-ID: <lnadln5wox.dln@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <3DA36DF9.CD52524F@mindspring.com> References: <20021008145226.K30424-100000@pogo.caustic.org> <3DA36DF9.CD52524F@mindspring.com>
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Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> writes:
> UNIX was free, too. The consent decree from the Greene decision
> on the AT&T antitrust case forbit AT&T from making money from
> selling software.
Now THAT's something I can believe (if I accept "free" as meaning only
no-cost licensing, which I'm happy to do). Except I think you got a
detail wrong. Either (or both) the 1956 concent decree or an agreement
with FCC in 1979-80 forbade BellLabs/WE from selling stuff outside AT&T.
The Greene decision got them off that hook, as you later indicated.
> For a long time, UCB did not "upgrade" its source license, because
> of the additional restrictions the new license tried to place on
> the code. They were happy with the old license.
Any guess when they DID upgrade their license and the gist of the new
terms?
Please confirm (to make this perfectly clear) what you seem to be
implying, that both schools and companies (and not just DoD contractors)
used, without paying any licensing fees, the then-current versions of
the "BSD OS" the entire time they were available (1978-now?).
So when Dennis Ritchie said "The contractors got the UNIX licenses from
Bell Labs, but they got the BSD software from Berkeley.", he was
referring to a no-cost license. And when history writers refer to
"buying BSD", they're referring only to the cost of tapes, etc.
One exception might have been AT&T itself, which (as I understand
things) might have paid very high prices for the products of WE &
Bell Labs, as allowed by the 1956 decree, to fund those companies.
But it's OK to consider them one big company in this discussion.
A nice, short history of AT&T, WE, and Bell Labs is at
http://www.bell-labs.com/history/lucent.html
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