From: nedu@netscape.net
To: tech@guardian.co.uk
Subject: A Dickens of a copyright case at last approaches its endgame
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 2:17 PM

Hi,

I'd like to congratulate Wendy M Grossman on her Thursday February 8, 2007 article, "A Dickens of a copyright case at last approaches its endgame".

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,2007595,00.html

One minor nitpick, though. In the eighth paragraph she wrote, "Then the networking company Novell bought the rights to 'Unix' from AT&T, and sued BSD." This is incorrect.

Instead, the complaint in Unix System Laboratories, Inc. (USL) v. Berkeley Systems Design, Inc. (BSDi) (Civil Action No. 92-1667 (DRD)), filed in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, is dated April 20, 1992.

See a copy of this complaint at: http://sco.tuxrocks.com/Docs/USL/920420.complaint
or at: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bsdi/920420.complaint.txt

It wasn't until eight months later, on December 20, 1992, that AT&T and Novell signed a letter of intent for Novell's purchase of AT&T's UNIX System Labs, and it wasn't until February 16, 1993 that the two companies announced they had signed a definitive purchase agreement.

See: http://web.archive.org/web/20051215194047/www.att.com/news/0293/930216.ula.html

Novell's purchase wasn't complete until June 14, 1993.

See: http://web.archive.org/web/20050209110146/www.att.com/news/0693/930614.ulb.html

Thus, Novell did not initiate the lawsuit against BSDi, as Ms. Grossman's article incorrectly claims.

Other than that, though, and maybe one or two other little teensy details, it's a good article. Again, congratulations. A history this complicated isn't easy, and overall, Ms. Grossman's article seems more or less roughly accurate.