AT&T Joining OSF

[Chris Tham]

In article <62485 at sun.uucp> pope at vatican (John Pope) writes:
>In article <377 at ksr.UUCP>, richt at breakpoint (Rich Title) writes:
>> 
>> ... DEC ships sources in 
>> micro-fiche format *free* with every major release, and machine-readable
>> source is available for those who want to pay for it. Which, is
>> a whole lot more open than Sun, for example.
>
>C'mon, this is really getting silly, even for this conversation. Sun also makes
>source available for those who want to pay for it. As for free fiche listings,
>VMS runs on DEC hardware only. This is obviously not the case with SunOS, so I
>can't imagine what prompted your comparison.

That's really funny.  I thought SunOS only runs on Sun hardware.  If I
was trying to make SunOS run on an IBM PC/XT :-) for example, I would
have to rewrite a _lot_ of code, especially like ALL the device drivers
and 68020/SPARC assembly.  Most of the libraries like PixRect would
probably need to be rewritten as well.  The point is, SunOS is either
wholly or partially derived from UNIX, either BSD4.2 or System V R2,
source.  Giving SunOS microfiche *free* with every release of SunOS
would probably contravene Sun's existing software licence with AT&T
and/or Berkeley.  So why doesn't AT&T release *free* microfiche copies
of System V?  Simple.  Because UNIX is designed to be a _portable_
operating system, releasing unrestricted source in any form would be
like shooting oneself in the foot, especially if one is licencing said
source code to other commercial organizations for big bucks.
-- 
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