UCB and USL/NOVELL settlement
Computer Protocol
>Amancio Hasty Jr (ha...@netcom.com) wrote:
>: Hi,
>: I saw a couple of postings on comp.os.386bsd.questions that USL wants
>: distributors of 386bsd derivatives to stop distribution!
>: Has anyone of the NetBSD team been contacted?
>: Does anyone knows what is going on from the USL side?
>: I find the current situation a bit odd because USL vs BSDI & UCB lawsuits
>: are over...
>Actually the outcome of the lawsuit was to encumber the Net/2
>sources. The primary copyright holders, Univ. of California and
>Novell, *both* have requested the halt of distributions of Net/2
>derivatives. The 4.4BSD/lite distribution was suggested as the
>substitution. The statement released be the University of
>California asked that free distributions be based solely on the
>unencumbered 4.4/lite. Part of the reason is that UCB has relinquished
>copyright claim to portions of the Net/2 tree. These portions
Why did UCB do this ??? Bloody traitors.
>now must display a Novell copyright, and evidently Novell seems
>to be serious about cracking down on copyright violators.
So now NOVELL is the new "Deathstar". Lets boycot the bastards. I have to
decide on a major new enterprise wide network. IT WON'T BE NOVELL. I'm
considering BANYAN. Any ideas.
Is there any chance of NOVELL/USL being able to prevent us here in Australia
from putting NET/2 or {Free,Net,386}BSD up for FTP or even publishing the
CDROMs?
Is there anybody at UCB or BSDI willing to give us access to the "secret"
parts of the settlement? There are ways of posting it anonymously. I
believe a reasonably large number of people would have knowledge of these
"secret" parts.
Also is there anybody who knows which parts are affected by Novells copy-
rights?
>Several CD-Rom distributors have already been contacted. Use of
>the Net/2 tree now requires formal licensing and $$$.
>Thomas
>t...@netcom.com
Tibor Sashegyi (cpr...@cs.curtin.edu.au)
Jordan Hubbard
So now NOVELL is the new "Deathstar". Lets boycot the bastards. I have to
decide on a major new enterprise wide network. IT WON'T BE NOVELL. I'm
considering BANYAN. Any ideas.
Just to set this particular record straight - in talking with Burt
Levine, who is USL's senior legal council, I have been very favorably
impressed with his willingness to negotiate with us, even to the
extend of spending reasonably large portions of his (what must be very
expensive) time to try and work out a reasonable compromise.
USL could have just put the boot down and said "HALT." They did not.
What they have done instead is talk to us (well me, anyway) about the
immediate and future needs of FreeBSD vs those of USL, and what kind
of arrangements might be made in order to keep both sides happy.
Considering that we're really nothing more than a group of guys who
bang this stuff out for fun, their willingness to treat us as
legitimate entities in our own right and negotiate with us at all is
somewhat surprising.
Needless to say, this attitude in any company, much less one the size
of Novell, deserves a certain degree of praise. They're not the
Deathstar, nor do I believe they can afford to be ("USL sues small
group of non-profit UNIX developers, claims UNIX is an Open System!
:-)") and I believe they know this.
Jordan
Charles Hannum
>Actually the outcome of the lawsuit was to encumber the Net/2
>sources.
Why did UCB do this ??? Bloody traitors.
You forget 2 things:
1) The Net/2 sources are already encumbered, in that you must replace
them within one year of the release of 4.4Lite if you are distributing
the source.
2) THEY WROTE THE DAMNED CODE.
>now must display a Novell copyright,
That's a USL copyright, and it does not affect distribution of the
code.
--
- Charles Hannum
NetBSD group
Working ports: i386, hp300, amiga, sparc, mac68k, pc532.
In progress: pmax, sun3.
Richard Tobin
>1) The Net/2 sources are already encumbered, in that you must replace
>them within one year of the release of 4.4Lite if you are distributing
>the source.
Could you elaborate on this? USL *assert* that the Net/2 sources
contain their code, but there is no reason to suppose that they are
legally in the right about this. Net/2 was distributed without any
rule about replacing it with 4.4Lite and UCB cannot impose any such
condition retroactively.
So, where does this one-year rule come from?
-- Richard
--
Richard Tobin, HCRC, Edinburgh University R.T...@ed.ac.uk
"Your monkey has got it right, sir." - HHGTTG
Datacraft Technology
>In article <cproto.765983338@marsh> cpr...@cs.curtin.edu.au (Computer
>Protocol) writes:
> >Actually the outcome of the lawsuit was to encumber the Net/2
> >sources.
> Why did UCB do this ??? Bloody traitors.
>You forget 2 things:
...
>2) THEY WROTE THE DAMNED CODE.
Who is _THEY_ ???
_THEY_ is not UCB but hundreds if not thousands of outside contributors
as well as students which happened to study at UCB. A few individuals
at UCB have done a wonderful job. But again IT WAS NOT UCB WHO WROTE
BSD !!!!!
Tibor Sashegyi
Greg Lehey
>In article <MYCROFT.94...@duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu> myc...@duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Charles Hannum) writes:
>>1) The Net/2 sources are already encumbered, in that you must replace
>>them within one year of the release of 4.4Lite if you are distributing
>>the source.
>
>Could you elaborate on this? USL *assert* that the Net/2 sources
>contain their code, but there is no reason to suppose that they are
>legally in the right about this.
I've compared some of the Net/2 and 7th edition code mentioned in the
USL/BSDI settlement and found some minor similarities in code that
could have been written by a first year CS student. It's completely
unimportant to the function of the system, and could easily (in an
hour or so, in the file I looked at) have been replaced. But it
wasn't. I believe that USL is correct in stating that these functions
were derived from code which now belongs to USL. I believe that they
are incorrect in stating that this has resulted in any damage
whatsoever to USL or any of their partners.
I wish the hell the suits would get this notion out of their
collective heads that any code, once written, is the word of God. If
they believe this, why do they treat the people who write it so
disdainfully?
--
---------------------------------------------
Greg Lehey | Tel: +49-6637-1488
LEMIS, Schellnhausen 2, | Fax: +49-6637-1489
36325 Feldatal, Germany | Mail: gr...@lemis.de