Ancient UNIX


Ancient UNIX is a term coined by Santa Cruz Operation, to describe early releases of the Unix code base released prior to Unix System III, particularly the Research Unix releases prior to and including Version 7.
After the publication of the Lions' book, work was undertaken to release the earlier versions of the codebase. SCO first released the code under a limited educational license.
Later, in January 2002, Caldera International relicensed several versions under the four-clause BSD license, namely:
So far there has been no widespread use of the code, but it can be used on emulator systems, and Version 5 Unix has been made to run on the Nintendo Game Boy Advance using the SIMH PDP-11 emulator. Version 6 Unix provided the basis for the MIT xv6 teaching system, which is an update of that version to ANSI C and the x86 or RISC-V platform.
As an example of how relicensing the old Unix code bases has affected the modern computing community, the BSD vi text editor was based on code from the ed line editor in those early Unixes. Therefore, "traditional" vi could not be distributed freely, and various work-alikes were created. Now that this code is no longer encumbered, the "traditional" vi has been adapted for modern Unix-like operating systems.
SCO Group, Inc. was previously called Caldera International. As a result of the SCO Group, Inc. v. Novell, Inc. case, Novell, Inc. was found to not have transferred the copyrights of UNIX to SCO Group, Inc. Concerns have been raised regarding the validity of the Caldera license, suggesting that it may not be valid.