SysV rel3 license

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <859 at fig.bbn.com> rsalz at bbn.com (Rich Salz) writes:
-..In fact, I would love to see someone independent of the vendors
-..perform a study of the AT&T license, and compare it to the mechanisms
-..which make up the OSF, and report their findings to this conference.
->  Doug Gwyn
->I did this, and as previously noted there is nothing particularly
->obnoxious about AT&T's UNIX licensing terms.  In fact the per-CPU
->binary sublicensing fees under SVR3 are much less expensive than before.
-There are many people who strongly disagree with you on this, including
-several prominent universities, and and some companies whose commitment
-to open standards is a hallmark among the *investment community.*  Two
-quick examples are MIT and HP.
-I don't like calling Doug out by name, but it sounded like he's trying
-to reassure people that the new license is okay, when many folks with
-extensive legal staffs believe otherwise.

I have the disadvantage of having had to deal directly with AT&T
licensing myself.  I suppose that disqualifies me.  Ok, then, at
least READ the license/schedule rather than parroting what other
people misstate about it.

I'm surrounded with SVR3 ports here, on a variety of systems from
several different vendors, and our local gurus made no special
effort to select SVR3-based systems (in fact, they are biased
toward 4.3BSD).  These systems were acquired on the basis of best
performance per cost, which tells you something about the vendors
who ARE shipping SVR3.  I can only conclude that a sufficient
number of system vendors' lawyers came to the same conclusions
that I did about the terms of the SVR3 license, and that it has
not been a significant hindrance for many companies on the leading
edge of technology.  Problems that other companies have I frankly
don't much care about, since we don't buy their systems.  (But we
do occasionally have to port software to them, which is why I am
concerned about porting applications to those systems.  A small
difference in the support environment has a disproportionate
effect on our software development resources.)

By the way, I thought H-P had signed the SVR3 license.