http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/pups/2002-March/000471.html

This would be the "PUPS -- The PDP-11 Unix Preservation Society mailing list".

Michael Davidson m_d@pacbell.net
Tue, 26 Mar 2002 16:47:33 -0800

Warren Toomey wrote:
>
> In article by Robert Tillyard:
> > Would SCO->Caldera have copies of this? SCO did the Intel port of Xenix
> > so they would probably have started with the PDP source. Would tapes be
> > copyright to Microsoft?

As I mentioned in another message, I believe that SCO really had very little to do with XENIX/11, because they already had their own commercial version of V7, called Dynix.

[ when I arrived at SCO in 1986 there was what appeared to be a pretty complete archive of everything the company had ever done in the "media library" - there were lots of Dynix and V7 tapes in there, but I can't recall ever actually seeing one labelled XENIX/11 ]

Most of the XENIX/11 systems that I am aware of actually came from Logica.

There were several variants of the "Intel" port of XENIX which supported the 8086, the 80286 and, ultimately, the 80386. There were also a number of OEM versions, notably one from IBM (for the PC/AT) and several from Altos for machines such as the Altos 586 (8086 processor) and Altos 986 (80286 processor).

Most of the work on these systems was actually done by Microsoft.

SCO's contribution was in three main areas:
- device drivers
- the "no MMU" port for vanilla 8086 / 8088 systems such as the PC/XT
- packaging and creation of a "shrinkwrapped" product which sold through distribution channels

And then:

Lars Buitinck lars@fwn.rug.nl
Thu, 28 Mar 2002 00:24:11 +0100 (CET)

I'm getting really confused with all these companies. If I understand correctly...

AT&T/Western Electric sold UNIX rights to Microsoft.
Microsoft had HCR develop XENIX from V7.
SCO licensed XENIX from Microsoft.
SCO then subsubsublicensed XENIX to various vendors.

Please correct me. I must be wrong.

And then:

Michael Davidson MichaelDavidson@pacbell.net
Wed, 27 Mar 2002 15:58:13 -0800

Lars Buitinck wrote:

> I'm getting really confused with all these companies. If I understand
> correctly...
>

It was all very complicated ...
... much too complicated to describe accurately in a short piece of email.

One thing to understand is that the companies that you mention (and, of course, many others, all had ongoing relationships with each other that often lasted for a period of several years, so licenses and technology transfers weren't usually just "one-time" events.

I have added a few comments below which may help to add to the confusion.

>
>
> AT&T/Western Electric sold UNIX rights to Microsoft.
>

Not exactly. The only time that UNIX *rights* were really *sold* or transferred were with the various changes in ownership of the group which developed UNIX. ie the USL -> Novell -> SCO -> Caldera series of transactions.

[ NOTE: Davidson later corrects "*sold*" to read "*licensed*" ]

Microsoft was just another licensee of various versions of UNIX, starting with V7 and ending up with System V Release 3.2

>
> Microsoft had HCR develop XENIX from V7.
>

Once again it isn't as simple as that - I'm not sure of the exact sequence of events - HCR (which was acquired by SCO in the early 1990's) was yet another independent licensee of various versions of UNIX and had done work on both V6 and V7.

Perhaps Mike Tilson can shed some more light on exactly what went on back in those days - I will ask him when I get the chance.

>
> SCO licensed XENIX from Microsoft.
>

Yes.

>
> SCO then subsubsublicensed XENIX to various vendors.
>

Yes, although SCO's main business was in selling shrinkwrapped OS products for standard Intel hardware - SCO did sublicense the code to a few people - mainly large OEMs.

I believe it would have been this "Intel port" of XENIX (mentioned by Davidson) which ended up with Microsoft's licensing restrictions - the ports particularly destined for the 80286 and 80386 Intel processors.

Coindicentally, I used SCO XENIX System V/286 in the mid-1980's while sysadmining a Point of Sale system for an auto parts store that ran on an NEC 80286.

And no: the auto parts store did *not* become Auto Zone :-/