mark@ems.UUCP (02/04/87)
Sigh! I spent a week tracking down the person who I got the YACC sources from, just to make sure that the source was indeed in the public domain before I posted it. I really did, I tried. He lied. I got a message from an individual on the net who compared the source to the AT&T distribution. He said that the code looked a lot like the AT&T version. I decided that I had best make sure that the source was or was not AT&T proprietary. After much hasseling, I finally got a look at the AT&T version of the source code. Not only does it look very similar, in many places it is exactly the same. Some of the comments and code have been removed/reworded/added to but that does not change the fact that the source is a direct copy, or a derivative work of the AT&T source. I have cancelled the articles that I sent out. I urge (plead?) anybody that got a copy off the net to destroy it. I have deleted all copies of it that I had. Needless to say, I will not be posting the lex source which I got from the same source that I got yacc from. I am sorry for the inconvience.
ddl@husc6.UUCP (02/04/87)
In article <142@ems.UUCP>, mark@ems.UUCP (Mark H. Colburn) writes: > > Sigh! I spent a week tracking down the person who I got the > YACC sources from, just to make sure that the source was indeed > in the public domain before I posted it. I really did, I tried. > He lied. > > I got a message from an individual on the net who compared the > source to the AT&T distribution. He said that the code looked > a lot like the AT&T version. I decided that I had best make > sure that the source was or was not AT&T proprietary. Just because it looks like the AT&T source doesn't mean it is a derivative work. It was my impression that there was a public domain yacc which was derived from the same source as the AT&T yacc--but not FROM the AT&T yacc. This yacc (and a lex) are being sold for the IBM PC by some small company and the code also looks a lot like AT&T yacc. Now the point of all this is that we should avoid setting a dangerous precedent: AT&T's proprietary rights (if any) should not be allowed to extend retroactively to code that they have acquired elsewhere! This is a great way to keep a monopoly on software, but I don't *think* it makes legal sense. If it does, I should grab as much public domain code as I can and start legal action against everyone else using it and and... In any case, it seems to me that once something has been distributed in this way the proprietary status (if any) is kind of lost. Assuming that this yacc is indeed AT&T's yacc, can AT&T really prosecute everyone who picks up a copy from the posting? Don't they have to show that they made some attempt to maintain secrecy? Even if they did (did they?) isn't there something about one person taking in good faith some information and thereby removing its proprietary status? Can anyone clarify this? Dan Lanciani ddl@harvard.*
johnl@ima.UUCP (02/05/87)
In article <1170@husc6.UUCP> ddl@husc6.UUCP (Dan Lanciani) writes: >In article <142@ems.UUCP>, mark@ems.UUCP (Mark H. Colburn) writes: >> ... I got a message from an individual on the net who compared the >> source to the AT&T distribution. He said that the code looked >> a lot like the AT&T version. I decided that I had best make >> sure that the source was or was not AT&T proprietary. > > Just because it looks like the AT&T source doesn't mean it is >a derivative work. It was my impression that there was a public domain >yacc which was derived from the same source as the AT&T yacc--but not >FROM the AT&T yacc. This yacc (and a lex) are being sold for the IBM >PC by some small company and the code also looks a lot like AT&T yacc. Not possible. Yacc and lex were written at Bell Labs by Bell Labs employees. All versions of them back to the very first belong to AT&T. If some small company is selling a version of yacc that looks a lot like AT&T's, they will probably be in trouble when AT&T notices them. John Levine PS: If somebody really has legally reimplemented them, I'd love to hear about it. The description of the algorithms in the Dragon Book would be a good place to start. -- John R. Levine, Javelin Software Corp., Cambridge MA +1 617 494 1400 { ihnp4 | decvax | cbosgd | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.something Where is Richard Nixon now that we need him?
jbuck@epimass.UUCP (02/06/87)
In article <1170@husc6.UUCP> ddl@husc6.UUCP (Dan Lanciani) writes: >In article <142@ems.UUCP>, mark@ems.UUCP (Mark H. Colburn) writes: >> >> Sigh! I spent a week tracking down the person who I got the >> YACC sources from, just to make sure that the source was indeed >> in the public domain before I posted it. I really did, I tried. >> He lied. > In any case, it seems to me that once something has been >distributed in this way the proprietary status (if any) is kind of >lost. Assuming that this yacc is indeed AT&T's yacc, can AT&T really >prosecute everyone who picks up a copy from the posting? Well, they could conceivably sue Mark Colburn, the backbone, every news site, or whatever. One big lawsuit and Usenet is gone. I recommend that everyone get rid of the posted yacc. If you really want a pd yacc, "bison" is available from the Gnu project, and you won't be vulnerable to a suit. There has already been the case of a site removing itself from the net because someone at that site posted proprietary code. Someone could post the entire Unix source to the net. It would then be in the public domain. But AT&T would be entitled to recover tens of millions of dollars in damages to everyone responsible, and nontechnical people would decide who's responsible. Everyone on the net might be required to ante up. It's scary to think about. -- - Joe Buck {hplabs,ihnp4,sun,ames}!oliveb!epimass!jbuck HASA (A,S) Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, California
gwyn@brl-smoke.UUCP (02/06/87)
In article <1170@husc6.UUCP> ddl@husc6.UUCP (Dan Lanciani) writes: >... It was my impression that there was a public domain >yacc which was derived from the same source as the AT&T yacc--but not >FROM the AT&T yacc... Although there may well be a public domain reimplementation of YACC, it cannot be derived from a "common ancestor" since YACC originated in (AT&T) Bell Laboratories. Due to various things AT&T has said in the past, the YACC parser and the (minimal) yacc run-time library embedded in one's application do not require any licensing fee when the application binary is given to others. I don't think this extends to the source form of the parser, but there is a chance that it might. It is EXTREMELY unlikely that anyone reimplementing YACC from publicly-available unrestricted information would come up with source code that looked very much like AT&T's.
ddl@husc6.UUCP (02/06/87)
In article <867@epimass.UUCP>, jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) writes: > Well, they could conceivably sue Mark Colburn, the backbone, every > news site, or whatever. One big lawsuit and Usenet is gone. I > recommend that everyone get rid of the posted yacc. If you really > want a pd yacc, "bison" is available from the Gnu project, and you > won't be vulnerable to a suit. Bison is unfortunately not public domain but includes the rather complicated copyright of the Free Software Foundation. The properties of this copyright are still being analyzed. Several people have claimed that a version of yacc appeared on a DECUS tape of public-domain software. Tomorrow I will look through our DECUS tapes to try to confirm this. But if I find yacc source and it "looks" like AT&T code, does that mean it is proprietary? Isn't another possible explanation that a copy was distributed before AT&T became interested in making unix proprietary? Can AT&T "take back" such a distribution? > There has already been the case of a site removing itself from the > net because someone at that site posted proprietary code. > > Someone could post the entire Unix source to the net. It would then > be in the public domain. But AT&T would be entitled to recover > tens of millions of dollars in damages to everyone responsible, and > nontechnical people would decide who's responsible. Everyone on the > net might be required to ante up. It's scary to think about. I somehow doubt that it would be in the public domain. But if it would, then yacc is, right? Could someone who knows the "legal" answers to these questions comment? How could everyone on the net be required to "ante up?" How do you prove that any individual is a net reader, or even a poster? (Obviously, I'm not writing this; it was forged by some evil hacker...) Full unix sources are available via anonymous ftp from many sites. Does this make them public domain? Does this make all users of the internet subject to legal action should anyone take advantage of them? Please, never be scared to think! I don't really want to play devil's advocate, but everyone else seems to take the approach of treating much more than need be as proprietary and pretending incidents like this one haven't happened rather that understaning the true consequences. And yes, I do believe in intelectual property rights. But I want to understand how they work, and, if it turns out that they work only for entities powerful enough to threaten an entire population with vague legal action, then I want to gripe. Dan Lanciani ddl@harvard.*
jpn@teddy.UUCP (02/06/87)
> If you really >want a pd yacc, "bison" is available from the Gnu project, and you >won't be vulnerable to a suit. Well, not by AT&T. However, people should be aware that bison inserts a copy of the GNU copyright into every generated C file. I had an electronic conversation with Richard Stallman about this - my argument was that while is was quite reasonable to put "bison" under GNU copyright, I felt it was overkill to put the C file generated from the yacc source under GNU copyright as well. He wasn't convinced. He feels that all new software in the world should be GNUware. Anyway, I refuse to use any tool that makes such a restriction on it's use (even if such a restriction is totally unenforcable!) Anyway, I bought a copy of the Austin Codeworks "yacc" (which is the same version that was posted to USENET, I believe), along with an attribute grammer preprocessor for YACC (called PREP) for $25. THEY SAY it is public domain. MY feeling is that if anyone is to get sued, it is THEM, not ME! Check out any micro magazine, they only distribute on MS_DOS format disks.
tower@bu-cs.UUCP (02/06/87)
In article <867@epimass.UUCP> jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) writes:
...
Well, they could conceivably sue Mark Colburn, the backbone, every
news site, or whatever. One big lawsuit and Usenet is gone. I
recommend that everyone get rid of the posted yacc. If you really
want a pd yacc, "bison" is available from the Gnu project, and you
won't be vulnerable to a suit.
- Joe Buck {hplabs,ihnp4,sun,ames}!oliveb!epimass!jbuck HASA (A,S)
Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, California
If you want information on how to obtain bison and other GNU software,
send an e-mail request to Internet address:
gnu@prep.ai.mit.edurlk@bacchus.UUCP (02/06/87)
In article <3740@teddy.UUCP> jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson) writes:
]Well, not by AT&T. However, people should be aware that bison inserts
]a copy of the GNU copyright into every generated C file.
Last time I looked at the bison sources, I couldn't find this
"feature". I checked the include and lib files as well. Perhaps he's
taken this out by now.
What would happen if your bison source contained a copyright notice
embedded in it? Then there would be two copyright notices, and one of
them would have to be bogus.
THEY
]SAY it is public domain. MY feeling is that if anyone is to get sued,
]it is THEM, not ME! Check out any micro magazine, they only distribute
]on MS_DOS format disks.
If you had reason to know that it wasn't in the public domain, then
you could get burned too. If ATT is in the business of collecting
netnews, a note such as yours might be considered evidence that you
knew that the version was not pd. Whether they'd go after you or only
after the company is another story, of course.
Robert^Zark@alice.UUCP (02/06/87)
In article <1179@husc6.UUCP>, ddl@husc6.UUCP writes: > Isn't another possible explanation that a copy was > distributed before AT&T became interested in making unix proprietary? > Can AT&T "take back" such a distribution? Unix has been proprieary since its inception. There is no issue of "taking back" a distribution.
tower@bu-cs.UUCP (02/12/87)
Keywords: gnu fsf software freedom In article <1179@husc6.UUCP> ddl@husc6.UUCP (Dan Lanciani) writes: > In article <867@epimass.UUCP>, jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) writes: > > ... If you really > > want a pd yacc, "bison" is available from the Gnu project, and you > > won't be vulnerable to a suit. Information on obtaining bison and other GNU software is available from: Internet: gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu UUCP: ..!mit-eddie!mit-prep!gnu > Bison is unfortunately not public domain but includes the rather > complicated copyright of the Free Software Foundation. ... The copyright is simple, it's the license that a few find complicated. One simply has to provide source code with any distribution of software based on GNU software. Things only get complicated when one wishes to not distribute source. I find the requirement to distribute source fortunate, the public will ALWAYS have access to the software. > The properties > of this copyright are still being analyzed. Specifically, by whom?? ;-} --------------------------------------------------------------------- Fair Notices: 1) I help the Free Software Foundation. 2) The above is my own statement. -- Len Tower, Distributed Systems Group, Boston University, 111 Cummington Street, Boston, MA 02215, USA +1 (617) 353-2780 Home: 36 Porter Street, Somerville, MA 02143, USA +1 (617) 623-7739 UUCP: {}!harvard!bu-cs!tower INTERNET: tower@bu-cs.bu.edu
mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (02/20/87)
In article <867@epimass.UUCP>, jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) writes: > Someone could post the entire Unix source to the net. It would then > be in the public domain. Actually it wouldn't. Just making something generally available, particularly if you broke a licensing agreement to do so, doesn't cause the owner to lose their ownership. However, something interesting did occur to me, apropos of which.... In article <1186@husc6.UUCP>, ddl@husc6.UUCP (Dan Lanciani) writes: > Maybe all of unix has become public domain and everyone is afraid to > admit it :-) Consider that if I fix a bug in, say, the kernel, and post the fix, I will do so in the form of a context diff. This will include maybe ten lines of the original code. Has anyone considered that collecting all these little pieces every time someone posts a context diff could add up to a fairly complete set of sources? Of course, I really rather doubt that it's come close to a complete set of sources yet (I also rather doubt that any system would live long enough for a significant portion of it to leak out this way). But it makes an interesting thing to think about. der Mouse USA: {ihnp4,decvax,akgua,utzoo,etc}!utcsri!musocs!mcgill-vision!mouse think!mosart!mcgill-vision!mouse Europe: mcvax!decvax!utcsri!musocs!mcgill-vision!mouse ARPAnet: think!mosart!mcgill-vision!mouse@harvard.harvard.edu