*BSD News Article 38172


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From: lm@slovax.engr.sgi.com (Larry McVoy)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: ffs & sunos?
Date: 20 Nov 1994 23:38:23 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc., Mountain View, CA
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References: <3ahflh$og3@spruce.cic.net> <scottr-1811941644050001@sarmac.acs.nmu.edu> <STEINAR.HAUG.94Nov19103316@bokfink.runit.sintef.no>
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Steinar Haug (Steinar.Haug@runit.sintef.no) wrote:
: > In fact, they could eliminate dependencies on the AT&T/USL
: > code entirely, while they're at it, to cut any royalty costs (which I
: > would assume they are paying USL).

: As far as I know Sun has bought the full rights to their ATT/USL Unix
: code parts from Novell for a onetime sum - I understand this to mean
: that they are *not* paying royalties to Novell any more. Anybody care
: to confirm or deny this?

This is true.  It is questionable whether their rights apply to just
SunOS 4.x as well as 5.x but for $90 million I would think they got the
whole thing.


: > I ended up reinstalling SunOS 4 here, and three new SS5s were ordered
: > in August with the explicit understanding that Sun would ship SunOS 4
: > with them.

: Yes, we're also buying new SS-5s with 4.1.3_U1. I don't really believe
: Sun's figures for how many people are running Solaris 2 (as in: Sun may
: well have sold that many Solaris 2 licenses, but a lot of those people
: are still running 4.1.x on the machines they have Solaris 2 licenses
: for).

This is exactly correct - for every machine that they ship with 4.x,
they give you a "free" Solaris 2.x license (at least they used to and I
think they still do).   That way Zander can say that there are ten
zillion Solaris 2.x sites out there when in fact it is far less than he
claims.  Most desktops appear to be still 4.x (with good reason).
--
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Larry McVoy			(415) 390-1804			 lm@sgi.com