[Lazarus] Proprietary vs Open Source mentality

[Marc Santhoff]

Am Sonntag, den 02.09.2012, 23:48 -0400 schrieb Rolf Grunsky:

> A not so minor historical note. Unix never was or is free. Unix was 
> developed at Bell Labs which was the R&D arm of AT&T. At the time, as a 
> regulated monopoly, AT&T could not sell the software and as a result, 
> made it available to educational institutions without charge. The 
> software was free as in free beer but the copyrights belonged to AT&T.
> 
> The University of California (at Berkley) produced a version of Unix 
> (BSD -- Berkley Software Distribution) that eventually was free of all 
> AT&T copyrights. AT&T Unix has never been "open Source". Just look at 
> the recent SCO squabble over the ownership of the Unix copyrights. AT&T 
> did licence Unix to several compainies. AIX is one example of a non free 
> derivative. On the other hand BSD Unix and all its derivatives are "open 
> source" being the original BSD Licence.

Additional remark:

   Open Source != free of charge

So following your description AT&T open sourced by laying the source
open to read for everyone but they did not give it away for nothing.

Holding rights on the source was one reason for the FreeBSD people
(maybe other BSDs too) to re-write mostly anything coming from the
original Berkeley source.

-- 
Marc Santhoff <M.Santhoff at web.de>