free sco unix

[Robert Simmons]

On Thursday, June 16, 2011 09:22:43 AM Matthew Seaman wrote:
> On 16/06/2011 13:52, Peter Vereshagin wrote:
> > You can't take no for an answer, freebsd-questions!
> > 2011/06/15 17:08:31 -0400 Chris Brennan <xaero at xaerolimit.net> => To
> > Thomas Hansen : CB> FreeBSD is a UNIX-like clone, which is indeed free,
> > whereas UNIX is CB> still the proprietary property of AT&T/Bell Labs.
> > 
> > unix is a trademark of novell.com.
> 
> Unix (note capitalization) is actually a trademark of the Open Group:
> http://www.unix.org/
> 
> It's been owned by them for more than ten years, but it was passed
> around between various owners quite a bit before that.

I think the confusion that you all are having is between the idea of 
"copyright" and "trademark".  They are different.  Copyright applies to the 
code base, and trademark applies to the usage of the word UNIX and its 
associated symbols along with the right to use said symbols once your product 
complies with a set of specified standards.

The copyright for UNIX is owned by Attachmate, which bought Novell recently 
(which has scared the pants off the OpenSUSE community, but that's a different 
tale).  This has been proven in court.  You can see the verdict on groklaw:
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf2/Novell-846.pdf

Open Group, however, is a completely different animal.  They are a trademark 
certification organization.  They do not own the UNIX copyright, they own the 
trademark and the specification.  According to their website, "The Open Group 
has separated the UNIX trademark from any actual code stream itself, thus 
allowing multiple implementations."

So, if you wanted to call your software "UNIX" you would need to contact Open 
Group and make sure that your software licences the trademark, and complies 
with the standard.  If you want to use the source code of UNIX itself, you 
would license that from Attachmate.

Groklaw is a good place to start if you want to read about the whole debacle:
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20040319041857760