*BSD News Article 69380


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: BSD 4.3 (FreeBSD 1.1.5.1)
Date: 24 May 1996 21:21:20 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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dsantry@church.dcss.McMaster.CA (Douglas Santry) wrote:

> A small legal question, since BSD 4.3 is "encumbered", does that
> mean that *all* of the kernel source code is unusable?  Can
> somebody, for instance pluck the network code for the udp-tcp/ip and
> use it?  Or is the entire source tree for the kernel hands-off?
> Really one can use the code from 4.4-lites ofcourse but I am just
> curious...

First off, FreeBSD 1.1.5.1 wasn't strictly ``4.3BSD'' (it's been
``4.4BSD / 2''), and of course, nobody says that 4.3BSD as a whole is
``encumbered''.

The outcome from the BSD quarrel has been quite a bit differently (and
more difficulty) than that.  Legally spoken, you are in no way bound
to any result of the BSDi/USL/UCB lawsuit.  If <insert today's owner
of the UNIX sources> has a claim, they will have to battle it against
you explicitly.

Of course, picking 4.4BSD-Lite (or Lite2) is certainly a wise
decision, since one of the results of the mentioned lawsuit was that
this one counts as ``legally blessed''.

All of this aside, i think the IP networking code was never an issue
at all.  It's quite obvious for anybody that this one is a Berkeley
thing.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)