[rescue] rescue Digest, Vol 61, Issue 7

[Scott Quinn]

On Dec 11, 2007, at 5:39 PM, rescue-request at sunhelp.org wrote:

> On Tue, 11 Dec 2007, Sandwich Maker wrote:
>
>> " IRIX was under System V licensing, $60 to AT&T for a workstation, 
>> $250
>> " for a server.
>>
>> ...but solaris 2 is sV based too.
>
> Not just System V based.  Solaris 2 was part of Sun's collaboration 
> with
> AT&T to create SysVR4.  It's as much SysVR4 as AT&T's offerings were.
>

AFAIK all pre-Net BSDs were also under the AT&T license - not sure what 
the pre-System V license looked like exactly, but all commercial UNIX 
vendors had one in order to ship a BSD-based UNIX.

Hearsay is that Sun got a sweet deal from AT&T in return for the Vr4 
work they did.

Looking at some of the released documents seems to indicate that at 
some point SGI also bought out the per-copy fee to (at that time) 
Novell. IBM as well. Not sure about other UNIX vendors.

Did the OSF/1 derivatives require a AT&T license? Wondering, since OSF 
was started to get out from under the thumb of AT&T/Sun at the time of 
the Vr4 announcement.