SearchEnterpriseLinux: Usenix President: Linux Needs Better Paper Trail

May 24, 2004, 18:15 (1 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Jan Stafford)

[ Thanks to Michael S. Mimoso for this link. ]

"Since you're a veteran of the AT&T vs. BSD legal battles, could you draw some parallels between that battle and SCO's suits?

"Marshall Kirk McKusick: In the 1990s, the IT people at AT&T, which was USL [Unix System Labs] by that time, had not been around when their software's code was being developed and integrated during the 1980s. The AT&T people who had brought the code in had deleted the Berkeley (BSD) copyrights. So those folks in the 1990s started comparing their code base with the Berkeley code base, and they found lots of the same code in the Berkeley code base and the USL/AT&T code. They didn't realize it hadn't originated at AT&T. That is what caused the whole thing to start in the first place..."

Complete Story

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