Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
   
   There has just been a terrific announcement on this list: SCO is letting
anyone have a copy of the Original UNIX for only $100! Hurrah!!! This also
has very interesting implications for Berkeley UNIX.
   
   Anders Magnusson <ragge@ludd.luth.se> wrote:
> Interesting! A 32V source license is what is required to get the 4.4BSD
> _encumbered_ license. This means that people should be able to get and
> run older BSD OSes for a minimal fee. (Hey, Sokolov! :-)
   
   Kevin P. Neal <kpneal@pobox.com> wrote:
> >> Covers derived versions of UNIX which ran on PDP-11s.
>                                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ***
>
> Doh!
>
> And I was hoping to get the 4.4BSD tapes. Shucks.
>
> Well, it was a nice thought -- then I read the post again.
   
   Arno Griffioen <arno@usn.nl> responded:
> I'm under the assumption that '32V' as mentioned in the license
> is/was VAX based and having this particular license is all that's
> required to get a BSD license which will then allow you to get 'real'
> BSD..
   
   James Willing <jimw@agora.rdrop.com> responded:
> Word I have from the people coordinating the licensing, is that having
> the source license for 32V does indeed fufill the requirement needed to
> obtain the BSD 4.x releases.  That was a specific reason that 32V was
> included in the deal.
   
   In "32V" the "V" stands for "VAX" and "32" signifies it's 32-bitness.
All encumbered code in 4.xBSD comes from V6, V7, or possibly 32V. In any
case, the license that UC Berkeley asks for is the 32V one. The same is
true for the encumbered BSD derivatives like HPBSD from the University of
Utah.
   
   For more information on the SCO deal, see the PUPS pages at
<http://minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au/PUPS/>. In there you can see the actual
license text one has to sign, which clearly says that the license covers
all work DERIVED FROM V6, V7, or 32V, and this clearly includes 4.xBSD.
This has nothing to do with the CPU type. Also somewhere in those pages you
can see a clear statement that this license CAN be used to get 4.xBSD
tapes.
   
   The only remaining obstacle is that if you want to get a BSD tape
directly from UC Berkeley, they will charge you a "distribution fee" of
$2400 for 4.4BSD or $1000 for 4.3BSD. Probably the only feasible way for
people to get these tapes would be to get those people who already have
them to simply copy them. This is absolutely legal as long as the recipient
of the copy has an appropriate license. The hobbyist SCO license explicitly
allows free exchange between licensees. The only thing remaining to be done
is to make sure that UC Berkeley's own license doesn't prohibit this. I
believe that it doesn't, and I am going to check this with Pauline
Schwartz, the person who sends out BSD tapes and takes care of other ex-
CSRG affairs at Berkeley. I will soon let you know what I hear from her.
   
   Sincerely,
   Michael Sokolov
   Phone: 440-449-0299
   ARPA Internet SMTP mail: sokolov@alpha.ces.cwru.edu