AT&T’s Unix System Laboratories has been given clearance to license the Unix operating system freely in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe according to the Labs’ London-based European managing director Bob Mitze. The announcement, expected today, that Unix can be sold under a General Export Licence follows negotiations between Unix Labs and the US government Trade and Commerce Department on a relaxation of the CoCom rules which have up to now included Unix on a list of technologies prohibited for export to the Eastern Bloc. Unix Labs says it will negotiate source-code rights on a country-by-country basis as the new former Comecon countries bring property and commercial laws in line with the West.
