Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 20:44:11 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Harry Tabak <htabak@quadtelecom.com> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org, "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@attbi.com> Subject: Re: Lawyers to be sicked on *BSD? Message-ID: <3E30C49B.51D10FAC@mindspring.com> References: <0gvg0gn1o4.g0g@localhost.localdomain> <3E2F3BE6.A8FEEFA5@mindspring.com> <3E30B7AA.7000008@quadtelecom.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Harry Tabak wrote: > I wonder if the SCO Group has done its homework. *BSD and SVR* are > hopelessly entangled. The original code for BSD came from AT&T, and > AT&T/USL versions were at least 50% UCB developed. In 1994, UCB and USL > settled a nasty lawsuit which resulted in an unencumbered 4.4 BSD-Lite > Release. The settlment requires that certain files in BSD-Lite include a > USL copyright notice and certain USL files to include UCB credits. > > See <http://www.daemon.org/bsd-releases/misc/USL-lawsuit>; for more info. > > I believe that all USL files in *BSD and Linux are derived from that > unencumbered BSD-Lite release, and are therefore properly "licensed". Or > have people gotten careless? I think that SCO is trying to make money > on FUD. Speaking of FUD... The thing that touched this off was SCO announcing that they would be licensing intellectual property, and retaining a rather famous lawer, whose name is "Boies". The reason they retained him was to obtain advice on licensing the "System V on Linux" code; basically, IBCS2 and other binary pieces needed for running System V programs under Linux, including the shared libraries. FWIW, the UCB/USL lawsuit, which was primarily a result of BSDI hiding behind UCB after yelling "Due Dilligence!", after pissing off the AT&T lawyers into "anticompetitive mode" through their illegal use of the UNIX trademark, had as one of its settlement stipulations that there would be no future actions filed against BSD 4.4-Lite derived code bases. Like FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. So this tempest is meaningless on BSD mailing lists, no matter what. Also, FWIW, there area number of Novell patents which were non-exclusively licensed to USL, and thereby to SCO, that at least one Linux FS is substantially infringing. BSD got around those by implementing full soft updates, instead, which are not covered by the patents. In any case, it would be Novell, not USL (now SCO) who would have to enforce the patents, since the license was non-exclusive. Even so, the settlement stipulation for BSD 4.4-Lite derived code may in fact act as a blanket patent license. In any case, I'm sure that all the Open Source projects are substantially infringing any number of patents (though not as a result of code that I wrote, if I could help it). As one example, SQUID infringes on no less than 5 IBM patents, which is why we were required to not ship it as part of the software on the Whistle InterJet, after IBM acquired Whistle, to avoid granting a blanket license to use those 5 IBM patents, under terms of GPL'ed distribution granting perpetual rights without fee, and the requirement that licensing be on parity terms, in order for IBM to be allowed to bid on Federal Goverment contracts (effectively, if you charge on person $0, you have to charge every person nor more than $0). In any case, it's unlikely anyone wants to push such a case, since to do so risks binding case law... which is why no such case has ever been taken to the appellate level, so far, and is one of the main reasons (IMO) that the USL/UCB suit was settled. I'm actually still angry about there being a settlement in that case: UCB had a strong case, and DMR was willing to testify that there were no USL trade secrets embodied in the code, and MIT was willing to put their patent portfolio behind the case, and back it with $, at one point (try to prove that UNIX is not infringing at least one MIT patent... 8-)). I rather expect that if anyone really pursued something like this to the apellate level, we'd find software patents being at risk of being declared invalid altogether. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3E30C49B.51D10FAC>