Slashdot Mirror
Caldera releases original unices under BSD license
q[alex] writes "Caldera International has done a very good thing. They have released the "Ancient" Unices they inherited when they purchased SCO under a "BSD-style" license. The license is available here, instructions on finding the source are here. Caldera (and before that SCO) had required people to obtain a free (as in beer) but somewhat restrictive license in order to get these old sources. The new BSD-style licensing only applies to the 16-bit PDI-11 versions and some of the early 32-bit releases (excluding System III and System V), but it's still very cool."
However, a big thank-you from this Slashdot reader for their act. I appreciate it, and I know I'm not alone...
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
I don't mean to sound like a stick in the mud here, but why exactly is this cool? This source code was obviously available before, for people who actually needed it. Why, then, is the simple fact that anyone can get to it now a "cool" thing?
Will this spawn development of breakthrough products? Will this help administrators of these old system finally take control of their network?
Or is this just another geek trophy to have, print, wave around over coffee, and ultimately collect dust on shelves full of other useless time-wasting trinkets?
--SC
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
As a sysadmin at a company who uses these Unices, I would recommend that the hobbyist stay away from them. They're cludgy at best. I figure that this'll fare well mainly for those that are stuck with them, and need the source (we are slowly migrating to Linux/Solaris).
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
All these other posts up to this point think this story is dumb and who cares, this one guy says, "hey, it's linux, it must be cool" and gets modded up. Free speech my ass.
to play around with the old Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition with source code by John Lions.
It is amazing how much you can learn from this old stuff. And now we can discuss, modify, and share the code with each other.
This is really great! Thanks Caldera!
-- Never make a general statement.
That's almost certainly why Xenix isn't in there. In the last days of SCO, they wanted to release the Xenix source code, but were held up in negotiations with Microsoft in trying to get the rights released.
This is very cool indeed. These early UNIXes weren't at all feature-rich, compared to what we have now, but they were compact. Tight. Elegant. Worthy of inspection and study. And more accessible for that purpose because 5000 lines of code is more browsable than 500000. (Pulled both of those numbers out of goatse-guy's orifice.)
--
I don't want to rule the world... I just want to be in charge of mayonnaise.
And giving credit where credit's due is a bad thing why, exactly? One of the key motivations for doing Open Source/Free software is the kudos you get, so I really have no problem with authors requiring that licensees not pass the work off as their own.
which includes the particularly onerous Advertising Clause:
Why, exactly, is this onerous? You should expect to get code that you can basically do anything you want with it and being required to acknowledge the people who gave it to you is too much? I bet you never wrote thank-you notes to your grandparents for your presents, either.
The current BSD license may not contain this, and there's nothing wrong with that either -- but I don't understand how this is unreasonable.
I wish M$ was required to print an acknowledgement on every Windows box that mentions that their TCP stack is derived from BSD instead of putting on like they're the only company that's every produced useful software.
> And giving credit where credit's due is a bad
> thing why, exactly?
The problem is the "all advertizing material". Imagine everybody had such clauses in their license. A TV spot for Redhat Linux would be pretty long.
Disclaimer: IANAL. Simply my understanding of the matter.
is really amazing.
/tmp directory periodically.
:)
If you ignore the instructions for copying the system from magtape to disk (!), everything else looks very similar to the install notes for most modern unices today....
They tell you to 'cat' files to the printer, 'tar' together items for backup storage, 'sync' before you turn the machine off, and remember to check 'df' regularly to make sure your users don't fill up the disk, and clean out the
Reading documentation written 30 years ago which almost hasn't changed at all is really a beautiful thing. (Well, some things have changed. During bootup, the 'mem' line reports user-available memory in bytes.
Hats off to the developers of a system which is so flexible that hasn't really needed interface changing at all to adapt to 30 years of great changes in computer design and usage!
soo then, oss community IS linux?