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Caldera releases original unices under BSD license

Posted by Nik on from the born-free dept.

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."

2 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Great! by twilight30 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Never would have thought Caldera would have done something as community-oriented as this, given their history of late.

    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
  2. Re:Why is this cool? by Stan+Chesnutt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is great to have this available for study. And, this might inspire a whole new generation of PDP-11 emulators so you can sit down and actually run the original bits (emulation of an ASR-33 not considered mandatory).

    Computer Science would also be served well if the original Multics sources/binaries were released. Although it would be much harder to write a Honeywell emulator!