dan@idis.UUCP (Dan Strick) (03/23/84)
The unix sources are "proprietary". This means that AT&T has maintained the legal fiction that the unix sources are secret (i.e. not published) by requiring that everyone who has access to the sources sign a nondisclosure agreement. Since the sources have not been published, they don't need to contain copyright notices to be protected by copyright law. Question: There must be zillions of people who have access to unix sources and have signed nondisclosure agreements. There are certainly more than a few people who have managed to fall through cracks and have access to unix sources without having signed agreements. At what point does the legal fiction that unix is a trade secret become just a plain fiction? It seems to me that AT&T is depending more on the threat of legal action than on law to protect its rights to unix. Dan Strick U of Pitt [decvax|mcnc]!idis!dan
z@cca.UUCP (Steve Zimmerman) (03/28/84)
I think it is important for me to respond to Jophn Haller's article that referred to CCA EMACS, especially as I was referred to by name in that article. The article may have left the mistaken impression that CCA EMACS still contains some of Warren Montgomery's code, which is not the case. Up until the fall of 1982, CCA EMACS was distributed free of charge to a limited number of sites. This version of CCA EMACS did contain a limited amount of Montgomery's code. For various reasons, including its wide unrestriced distribution to dozens of sites (not by Montgomery, I should add), CCA believed that this code was in the public domain. Prior to the release of CCA EMACS as a commercial product, we felt that we should verify that Bell Labs agreed with us about the status of this code, and so we asked them. Their reply after investigating the matter was that the code was Bell Labs proprietary, and they requested us and all users of either CCA EMACS or Montgomery's EMACS outside Bell Labs (where its use is quite legal) to destroy this code immediately. Rather than to argue with Bell Labs, we felt that the simplest course of action was to accede to their request. Since at this point there was very little of Montgomery's code left in CCA EMACS, it was a straightforward matter to remove that code and rewrite from scratch all the affected routines. When this was done, we assured Bell Labs that none of Montgomery's code was left in CCA EMACS, and they replied to us that they accepted our assurance. All this happened before the first commercial release of CCA EMACS last May, and no problems concerning this issue have arisen since then. It is important to note that Bell Labs did not force CCA to take any actions, as John Haller claimed; at no point were communications between Bell Labs and CCA at all unfriendly. Steve Zimmerman Computer Corporation of America
jhh@ihldt.UUCP (John Haller) (03/29/84)
I'm sorry I gave the impression that AT&T Bell Laboratories originated action against CCA. I do believe that your experiences are useful in determining what would happen if some misguided soul posted all the unix sources. I again wish to apologize for the impression that Steve Zimmerman or CCA may ever have committed any improprieties. John Haller AT&T Bell Laboratories
mike@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Michael Williams) (04/12/84)
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Speaking of the CCA/EMACS issue, copyrights, etc....
If someone takes the source for a "protected" program,
changes all the "nouns" (variable names...), and redistributes
it as h{i,er}s, is that a no no ? What if they change for(;;)'s
to while()'s. Where does one draw the line ?
One of the apparently myriad Mike Williams-ae.