[Novalug] Breaking up is hard to do ... the M$-Novell Cat and Mouse Game

[Bryan J. Smith]

UNIX System Labs (USL) was sold to Novell in 1994.
That ownership is at the heart of Novell v. SCO.

Coincidentally, in 1994, Ray Noorda disagreed on the UNIX(R)
direction, and argued another platform should be the foundation
for the future of NetWare and networking services.  The company's
name?  Caldera.  ;)

The world is small.

As far as "every major hardware firm had a version," everyone
except Microsoft and Sun bought a perpetual license to System V
after AT&T's enforcement efforts of the mid '80s.  It's also when the
lawsuit started between AT&T and Berkeley, not to be settled until
the agreement in the early '90s that resulted in 4.4BSD.

GNU uses no UNIX code, and Linux avoided using any BSD until
4.4BSD, and then only sparringly.  It is extremely important to know
this and _never_ refer to Linux as a UNIX platform, but a GNU platform.
Stallman had a point and it is still a very good one.




----- Original Message ----

Just curious - who DOES hold UNIX rights nowadays?  I remember
when Bell Labs pretty much had a lock on them, but all through the
early 80's it seemed that every major hardware firm had a version.