Slashdot Mirror
Caldera to Open Part of UNIX Source
Andy Tai writes: "According to this Caldera press release, Caldera is beginning to release the components of the original Unix source code under the GPL or other licenses (such as Caldera's Open Access license). While some of these Unix utilities (grep and awk) may not be very useful, since GNU equivalents have been available for many years, the original Unix tools going GPL has a big symbolic meaning--the original Unix is gradually becoming Free Software! Unix was the giant RMS aimed to replace. Now GNU is gradually taking the place of the original Unix."
Er, read the article. The source is not just being open sourced, but GPLed. So it *is* becoming Free Software.
It doesn't have to be official GNU software to be Free; it only has to be under a Free license.
And don't think for a moment that this would have happened without both the GNU project and the Linux kernel -- dare I say GNU/Linux? The GNU utilities have gotten better than most of their proprietary equivalents, and Linux is quickly getting better than the proprietary Unices. That's why the vendors are slowly giving way to the unstoppable Linux. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!
The source code was distributed with UNIX, but the terms of the license pretty much said not to sell the code or give it away. It was open source (the souce comes with the product), just not "free" in the way that that the GPL states or as in beer. BSD was originally rooted in college students rewriting large chunks of this code as part of a course in operating systems, the code made its way into textbooks and could be bought and sold. AT&T didn't like this obviously. I remember large parts of this story being in "Geeks (1.0 or 2.0)" so you might go there for more details.
By the By, linux is not based on ANY of this code, it was written from scratch, which is why it is posix but not unix (and only posix if the distribution is posix, many fail this test).
Few years ago, Santa Cruz Operation (aka SCO, a long-time producer and seller of Unix for i386) bought the AT&T Unix sources (and the name) from Novell. Few months ago, Caldera acquired SCO. So Caldera now owns Unix.
By the way: Ray Noorda, one of Caldera's founders (or financees) and former Novell CEO, was the guy who BOUGHT the Unix sources during his time at Novell. VERY bright guy he is!
ix
The GNU versions of grep and awk are much better than the original UNIX variants. Also, people have had access to the GNU versions for a long time and they are well within their capabilities to support any of the arguments/options that their UNIX counterparts do. With that out of the world, what does this whole Open Sourcing of grep and awk mean?
It's rather like throwing us Linux users a bone. Nothing more. The aforementioned utilities are aged and not terribly useful. Granted, this is a start. But until we see some SVR5 kernel source code and perhaps some POSIX implementation code, this is nothing more than getting a headline on slashdot.
I think Caldera expects some immediate return here. Regretfully they can't expect this in terms of monetary means. I am not going to buy Caldera Linux because they are nice and release two utilities.
What could potentially be useful is the regex engine. Even though the DFA and NFA engines are both pretty specified and there are GNU implementations of both DFA and NFA compliant engines, there are the matters of POSIX regex which are implemented halfway. This regex engine has been POSIX certified which means that implementational considerations may be dealt with. That is if Caldera was going to use GPL for this. If Caldera uses its own license, which pretty much restricts people from using derivative code, it's rather useless anyway except for educational purposes.
Now when I see an anonymous CVS repository containing the kernel, threading library implementation et al and these are signed with GPL/BSD compliant licensing, then I'll jump. Before that, I'll just sit tight.
Alex
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand