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Bell Labs most certainly did not release Unix into the public domain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi
by dadkins 13y ago
Bell Labs most certainly did not release Unix into the public domain:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi
- msoad 13y agoI like how people write blog, get tens of comments and feedback and yet they haven't done the simplest research required for saying something in public with this certainty
- sliverstorm 13y agoTechnically accurate, but it's not that simple. Under a 1956 consent decree in settlement of an antitrust case, AT&T (the parent organization of Bell Labs) had been forbidden from entering the computer business.. Unix could not, therefore, be turned into a product. Indeed, under the terms of the decree, Bell Labs was required to license its non-telephone technology to anyone who asked. AT&T made Unix available to universities and commercial firms, as well as the United States government, under licenses. The licenses included all source code including the machine-dependent parts of the kernel -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Unix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Unix So, while they did not actually release it to public domain, they got about as close as they could have without actually doing so. Remember the GPL didn't exist until 1989. Also, I would speculate the generally free access to Unix V probably helped bring about the modern environment of open source, which didn't really exist then.
- jasomill 13y agoAccording to Wikipedia[1], AT&T/Bell Labs UNIX license fees (for non-academic use) during the '70s and '80s ranged from $20,000—$200,000, and the terms were not even close to public domain, free, or open. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Systems_Research_Group http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Systems_Research_Group