Jerry Feldman wrote:
On Thursday 04 August 2005 8:53 am, James Knott wrote:
According to Novell, they didn't get the copyrights. This is true, but a matter for the courts.
The claims about JFS are curious, as it was developed for OS/2 and then ported to AIX & UNIX. They are apparently claiming derivative works, even though they never, according to AT&T, inherited that right. The "derivative works" is complicated, and there is quite a bit of testimony as to what IBM and AT&T agreed to. IBM's perpetual license predates the sale of Unix from AT&T to Novell. In the very strictest sense, any program one writes in Unix is a "derivative work". If IBM had agreed to the original AT&T clause, then NUMA, SMP and JFS would qualify. (JFS is more complicated because the Linux version is effectively the OS2 version).
AT&T had at one point clarified what was referred to by derivative rights. According to what I read, they meant it to refer only to actual AT&T code included in the software and specifically excluded the other code, written by the licencee. So in the case of JFS, if IBM had included Unix code, then the rights would apply only to that code and not JFS as a whole, as SCO claimed.