🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1425@sdcsvax.UUCP> jc@sdcsvax.UUCP (John Cornelius) writes:
>All of this broo ha ha over license is puzzeling. If BSD can only be licensed
>on a VAX, how does one port to something else? Are there any lawsuits yet?

It is not the case that BSD can only be licensed on a VAX. Here's the
way it really works.

A few years ago, if you bought the source to Unix from ATT, you had
the choice of PDP-11 or VAX. Since the machines were so much alike,
ATT treated them identically as far as licensing rights. Then
microprocessors like the 68000, the 80286, and the WE32000 came out.
ATT decided to support them also. Although Unix is more portable than
most operating systems, this was still a substantial amount of work.
You need a new compiler, assembler, linker, loader, etc. Then you get
to do the hard work!  As is their right, ATT wants to recover the cost
of this (as well as charging what the market will bear). So if you
already have VAX source and want the 68000 source to get their
software tools, you have to pay an additional $16,000. Or vice-versa.

Now let's talk about BSD. BSD is based on ATT source so the BSD
license requires an ATT license as a preq. In particular, the BSD code
is based on the PDP-11/VAX ATT source. If you have a 68000 license,
that does not entitle you to receive VAX source or anything derived
from VAX source. If you have VAX source you are free to modify it to
run on a 68000. But you will have to write your own software tools.  I
believe this is what Sun has done. In fact, I suspect many vendors
have VAX licenses since they probably started their ports before the
different CPU versions of Unix.

By the way, did you know that if you pay the right fees to ATT you
can get additional CPU source licenses for $1,000 each and object
(1-2 users) for $60? But you have to pay $84,000 first.
-- 
 Real men don't have answering machines.

 Phil Ngai +1 408 749 5720
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