This page mirrors the posture recorded in the repository, which is the authoritative version and carries the sources for every claim. It is not legal advice; it deliberately follows what the preservation community has done publicly since 2017.
The governing instrument
Research Unix Editions 8, 9 and 10 are distributable because of a statement made by Alcatel-Lucent, now Nokia, in March 2017:
“…it will not assert its copyright rights with respect to any non-commercial copying, distribution, performance, display or creation of derivative works of Research Unix® Editions 8, 9, and 10.”
Three properties of it decide everything else:
- It is a covenant not to assert, not a licence — hedged “to the extent of its ability to do so”, and it grants no third-party rights.
- It is non-commercial only.
- It covers all three editions equally.
The statement itself is published by The Unix Heritage Society.
What follows for this app
- ipnx is free. No price, no advertising, no purchases. This is a condition of distributing the system at all, not a pricing strategy, and it cannot change while the app contains Research Unix.
- It is not called Unix. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group and the 2017 statement grants no trademark rights, so the name and branding avoid it. “Edition 8”, “Research”, “Blit”, “5620” are all safe vocabulary; the product name is not.
- It is published personally, not by a company. A commercial publisher sits badly against a permission that reaches non-commercial use only, whatever the intent. The code signature names an enrolled Apple developer team because Apple requires one — that is a key-holding arrangement, not a publisher.
- The disk image ships inside the app. Nothing is downloaded at runtime, which keeps the app self-contained.
Every component
| Component | Terms |
|---|---|
| Research Unix Edition 8 system and disk image | 2017 covenant — non-commercial |
| Edition 10 source, and its future disk image | The same covenant |
| 4.1BSD-derived code inside the system | UCB BSD licence — attribution in the credits |
| open-simh (the VAX) | MIT |
| dmd_core (the 5620) | MIT |
| AT&T 5620 ROM source | AT&T copyright, GPL-2.0, released 1994 — read, never linked |
| SwiftTerm (the glass terminals) | MIT |
| The Edition 10 manual (1990) | A published book, treated as encumbered — linked, never bundled |
| This project's own code | MIT |
The ROM source, and how far it was used
AT&T published the 5620's firmware source in 1994 under the GPL, and it names the exact firmware this app runs. It was used to answer questions — where a structure lives, what a table contains — and its boundary is written down precisely in the repository:read, not linked. No line of it is compiled into anything shipped here.
The one open question, stated rather than buried
Edition 10's native C compiler descends from System III/V code, which sits outside both the 2017 covenant's power (“to the extent of its ability”) and the licence that freed the early editions. It remains inside the disk image, exactly as it has at TUHS since 2017 and unchallenged, and it is never linked into app code. It is the sharpest open item in this project and it is recorded as one.
If you are reading this to decide whether you may do something
The full table, the reasoning and the primary sources are indocs/licensing.md, alongside the research file that cites each claim. If something there is wrong, please say so — it is the part of this project where being wrong matters most.