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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!mips!mips!darwin.sura.net!europa.asd.contel.com!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!aiai!jeff From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) Newsgroups: alt.suit.att-bsdi,comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: UNIGRAM's article on the USL-BSDI suit Message-ID: <7045@skye.ed.ac.uk> Date: 3 Aug 92 16:39:10 GMT References: <45961@shamash.cdc.com> <25138@dog.ee.lbl.gov> <1992Aug3.143259.23897@crd.ge.com> Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland Lines: 49 In article <1992Aug3.143259.23897@crd.ge.com> davidsen@crd.ge.com (bill davidsen) writes: >In article <25138@dog.ee.lbl.gov>, torek@horse.ee.lbl.gov (Chris Torek) writes: >| UNIGRAM is attempting to imply that BSDI is somehow >| being underhanded in disclosing the text of the initial complaint. > > What they imply in in the mind of the reader, but what they say sounds >true to me. They appear to be trying to swing public opinion against >USL, And what's wrong with that? > It seems to me that the university was not really trying to solve the >issue when they refused to let a mutually agreed third party examing the >whole body of code. By insisting on snapshots they give the appearance >of trying to hide something, even if they're not. No. They're just trying to get USL to say what supposedly was copied and to avoid anything tending to put the burden of proof on UCB. Lawyers do that kind of thing. It doesn't mean there's something to hide. Besides, USL claims NET/2 is contaminated. The NET/2 sources are available to USL, and they can therefore find anything that anyone's "trying to hide" there. They can even give NET/2 and their own code to a 3rd party. Why don't they? If USL has any evidence that code was copied, they should be able to say what code it was. For some reason, they don't seem to want to do this. > It seems to me that a lot of people want something for nothing, and >dislike AT&T/USL for trying to profit from their UNIX software. I don't mind USL profiting. What I mind is their trying to prevent other people from using non-AT&T and non-USL code written at Berkeley (and elsewhere). > Unfortunately there is a third >class of person who trys to steal the UNIX code, either byte for byte or >by rewiting the individual routines, and that's what the case is all >about. What's this about "rewriting individual routines"? I hope you don't want to suggest that if someone has a copyrighted (or otherwise protectec) compression routine no one can write _any_ compression algorithm because that would be rewriting a routine. -- jd