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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."

1 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Double ewww...SCO/Open Server by cgleba · · Score: 2, Offtopic

    SCO Open Server is 10x worse then Unixware. Don't even get me started :).

    A few notes:

    * No ELF shared libraries (COFF)
    * No loadable kernel modules (manually re-link the kernel for every new driver).
    * No kmalloc function for many kernel buffers; if you over-run a buffer you have to change the kernel header files, re-link and pray you don't over-run them again.
    * Many functions that should be in shared libraries are hacked to hell; for instance some NFS functions for "ls" are in ls itself rather then libc. GNU ls does not work with NFS directories on Open Server because of this.
    * They just implemented a dhcp client in Open Server about a year ago.

    [Necessary MS jibe] But hey, what can you expect from somthing that used to be a Microsoft product [Xenix].

    From what I could tell most of the SCO messiness came from a hacked merger of System V and System III into Open Server 5. What kills me about OpenServer is that it is STILL heavily used by the telco industry. A former company that I worked with looked at Linux but stuck with SCO Open Server because of "support" concerns.

    To the point:

    I'm just waiting for Caldera to Open-Source Open Server so that the whole computing industry can get a good laugh and Computer Science departments can gain a valuable teching tool as to what *NOT* to do in your OS :).

    I hate to say it, but I would prefer to be an MSCE then to ever touch Open Server again. Open Server is a complete shame to the name UNIX.

    I invite any Open Server fans out there to put in thier arguments for it -- I would love to hear anything that anyone has positive to say about it. Moreover, if anyone has a UNIX derivative that is *worse* then Open Server and is still sold today I would also love to hear about it. Frankly I don't think that's possible.