Novell Inc’s Unix Systems Group and the University of California at Berkeley, have, as expected, agreed to settle their cross-lawsuits. The settlement is said to clear the way for the university to release a new unencumbered version of the Berkeley 4.4 BSD Unix operating system, to be known as 4.4 BSD-Lite, which will not require a Unix Systems licence or royalty payment. It is believed that with this chapter of the 18-month-old legal rumpus closed, Unix Systems Group will also soon move to settle its accounts with University spin-out Berkeley Software Design Inc, which it has also charged with copyright infringement, trade secret violations, inducing breech of contract and unfair competition. Those charges stem from Berkeley Software’s attempts to commercialise a BSD/386 system which is based on Net2. The BSD-Lite code will apparently retain virtually all of the functionality found in Net2, the code that produced the Unix Systems Group lawsuit against the college, charging that Net2 contained restricted material. BSD-Lite is also expected to include a number of recent enhancements by the university. The settlement restricts further use and distribution of some Net2 files, and requires that certain BSD-Lite files bear a Unix Systems Group copyright notice. The university said that BSD-Lite will replace most of the restricted files. It strongly recommended that release 4.4 BSD-Lite be substituted for Net2. Unix Systems Group has also agreed to affix the university’s copyright notice on some files distributed with future Unix releases and credit the school for material derived from the Berkeley Software Distribution releases that are included in Unix. Berkeley will try to achieve wide distribution of the BSD-Lite code, which it says it be available at a nomimal cost. For source code, information on the new BSD-Lite, and the restrictions on Net2 call Berkeley’s Computer Systems Research Group, or Unix Systems Group.
