Direct descendant? Are you sure of this, and also claiming that all derivatives of this source are 100% freeware?
Why did you come here to make that comment?
Since there are several excellent versions of bonafide US-born Unix available, such as Sun Solaris and Apple OSX, which are completely legal copies, I wouldn't want anyone using an illegal foreign copy instead, if that is possibly the case.
It is much easier to find out if say... Open Source Minix is stealing code than MS so no, I am not 100% sure but I am far more sure of that then the windows box I am on now.. Given the Minix Kernel is a slim 4000 lines even SCO should be able to find out in less than three years..
Since there are several excellent versions of bonafide US-born Unix available, such as Sun Solaris and Apple OSX, which are completely legal copies
And neither of which meet the slim hardware usage that Minix meets it will run on far less than Solaris or OSX. So if I want to run something on a small old p120 I have lying in the closet what am I to do?
You need to understand the difference between code descendant and behavior descendant. You're thinking in the way that Darwin is descended from BSD, in that it uses the codebase. The other descendancy is in how it works, what flavor of UNIX it emulates. Minix works like (although has no code from) the original Bell Labs UNIX.
I wouldn't want anyone using an illegal foreign copy instead, if that is possibly the case.
And for once, please point me to an illegal foreign copy that any of us thinks is legal.