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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!news.hawaii.edu!ames!agate!ucbvax!decwrl!infopiz!lupine!mellon From: mellon@ncd.com (Ted Lemon) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: UNIGRAM's article on the USL-BSDI suit Message-ID: <MELLON.92Aug4172834@pepper.ncd.com> Date: 5 Aug 92 00:28:34 GMT References: <45961@shamash.cdc.com> <25138@dog.ee.lbl.gov><1992Aug3.143259.23897@crd.ge.co m> <7045@skye.ed.ac.uk><KANDALL.92Aug4161214@globalize.nsg.sgi.com> Sender: news@NCD.COM Organization: Network Computing Devices, Inc. Lines: 47 Nntp-Posting-Host: pepper In-reply-to: kandall@nsg.sgi.com's message of 4 Aug 92 21:12:14 GMT >That does not give me a whole lot of incentive for further investment >in the development of products for open licensing. The BSDI people >chant the litany of how they are the champions of open systems, but >they are the ones spoiling open systems for everyone. Good. By all means, keep your vile "open licensing" away from my computers. Have you ever read the OSF/1 source license agreement? How about the OSF/Motif license agreement? Let me clue you in - they're even more closed than AT&T's license agreements. This isn't really OSF/s fault - most of their code is licensed from foundation members, which means that they don't have control over the actual language in the license. I understand that you might feel motivated to make a buck in this marketplace, but the copyright laws don't allow you to make a buck by copyrighting ideas; only by copyrighting specific expressions of ideas. Allowing AT&T and USL to use the copyright laws to enforce the ownership of the ideas inherent in UNIX, particularly when AT&T didn't invent any of them (as has been discussed in previous articles), and particularly when even those ideas embodied in AT&T code which UCB has had access to are irrelevant now, would be a horrifying travesty of justice. Furthermore, allow me to point out that AT&T represented UNIX as a research operating system and encouraged schools to hack on it in a free and open manner, as early as Version 3 (I think; it might have been V4 or V4). They then took a lot of work contributed by those outside institutions, packaged it up, and declared it their property. The early AT&T versions of UNIX didn't include the Bourne shell, and my recollection from talking to old-timers (sorry guys... :') is that a lot of the file descriptor paradigm came about after the initial university releases. Certainly, the VM code and many of the nifty utilities came after this time. I would be very surprised to learn if even 50% of the code included with the 32V release actually originated at AT&T. In other words, characterizing the situation WRT AT&T, USL, CSRG and BSDI in the way that you have is so completely off base as to border on the ridiculous. _MelloN_ -- mellon@ncd.com Member, League for Programming Freedom | To learn how software patents could cost you your right to program, contact the LPF - league@prep.ai.mit.edu