Open Software Foundation

[William Sommerfeld]

Nat Mishkin commented on the weightiness of the SVR3 license.  I'll
second his comment.

I'm not sure if MIT ever signed it or not, but last I heard (a few
months ago), the lawyers from both sides had been going at it for a
few _months_ trying to find a license which both sides would sign.  It
was blocking our acquisition of Mach; I'm not sure whether we signed
the license, or whether the requirement of a SVR3 license as a
precondition for Mach was dropped.

Why was the license such a problem?  Well, I've heard two reasons
(from someone who was peripherally involved with the negotiations),
and there are probably more.

 * MIT doesn't like the use of the word "indemnify" in the
contract---it refuses to take responsibility for any alleged monetary
damages to AT&T resulting from disclosure of the source (instead, it
will "make its best efforts" to prevent disclosure).

 * MIT also didn't like the comments about "you cannot show this code
to foreign nationals", because foreign nationals make up 10-15% of the
student body here, MIT does not consider it in its interest to
"separate" them in any way from the rest of the student body (this is
also an issue with .

				- Bill