wolfe@wheaties.ai.mit.edu (John V. Wolfe) (06/08/89)
A guy here at the MIT AI lab got a disk in the mail with no return
address. It contained a README file (included here), the TeachText
application, and a Stuffit archive containing some source code. The
listing of the filenames in the archive are included after the text of
the read-me file. Makes for very interesting reading.
===============
5/22/89
The file called "Rom Src (Stuffit)" contains the complete
assembly language source to both Color QuickDraw and all
the hardware Equate files for the various Macintoshes ROMs.
The files have been twice-encrypted using Stuffit 1.5.1.
The password is "source".
The next mailing will consist of the complete source to the
hierarchical filing system and all the device drivers. Over
several weeks, we will distribute the entire source to the
Macintosh ROM as well as the source to System software
6.0.3, Finder 6.1, and AppleTalk 2.0. System 7.0 will be
distributed as soon as we secure a copy of it. Our objective
at Apple is to distribute everything that prevents other
manufacturers from creating legal copies of the Macintosh.
As an organization, the nuPrometheus League has no ambition
beyond seeing the genius of a few Apple employees benefit the
entire world, not just dissipated by Apple Corporate through
litigation and ill-will.
Anyone interested in directly receiving our next mailing should
place a classified ad sometime during the month of July in the
Bay Area Computer Currents or MacWeek with the word "nuPrometheus"
along with their address. At that time you may make specific requests for
sources that you have interest in obtaining.
/signed/
The nuPrometheus League
(Software Artists for Information Dissemination)
===============
The following files were in the Stuffit archive:
ANGLES.a
Arcs.a
bitblt.a
BITMAPS.a
ccrsrcore.a
colmgr.a
colorasm.a
cqd.a
drawarc.a
DRAWLINE.a
drawtext.a
gdevice.a
GRAFASM.a
LCURSOR.a
LINES.a
OVALS.a
PACKRGN.a
patterns.a
pictures.a
POLYGONS.a
PUTLINE.a
PUTOVAL.a
PUTRGN.a
qd.a
RECTS.a
REGIONS.a
RGNBLT.a
RGNOP.A
RRECTS.a
seekMask.a
SEEKRGN.a
SORTPOINTS.a
STRETCH.a
text.a
UTIL.a
xcqd.a
Above CQD / Below Hardware:
bootequ.a
colorequ.a
DeclROMqu.a
disptable.a
fasttraps.a
inc.sum.a
undvideoequ.a
nAtalkequ.a
nEqu.a
nFastTraps.a
nFSPrivate.a
nHardwareEqu.a
nPrEqu.a
nPrivate.a
nQuickEqu.a
nSCSIEqu.a
nSMgrEqu.a
nSonyEqu.a
nSysEqu.a
nSysErr.a
nTEMacs.a
nTimeEqu.a
ntoolequ.a
nTraps.a
qdHooks.a
SlotIntEqu.a
SlotMgrMacs.a
StartMacs.a
xFixMath.a
xHardwareEqu.a
xPrivate.a
xSonyEqu.a
xSysEqu.a
xTimeEqu.a
======================================================================
John Wolfe Disclaimer: I don't know what's going on,
wolfe@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu I just live here!
545 Technology Square, Room 414
Cambridge, MA 02139
======================================================================DN5@PSUVM.BITNET (06/09/89)
Following up an article about an organization distributing sources to the
Mac ROMs and System.
I think that this may actually make cloning the Mac Roms and system harder.
Since part of making a legal clone is being able to claim not to have seen
the original source code (to protect in areas where the clone accidentally
duplicated the original), this may make it harder to prove that a given
programmer hasn't seen these sources. I can't make cloning harder, but it
may make LEGAL cloning more difficult.
On the other hand, I wouldn't mind taking a glimpse of these sources myself
;-).
Jay, etc.. (D. Jay Newman)
dn5 AT psuvm.bitnet
Disclaimer:
I am NOT a lawyer, so the above (including my name) should be taken as
possiblly, perhaps even likely, incorrect.ech@cbnewsk.ATT.COM (ned.horvath) (06/10/89)
From article <2801@wheaties.ai.mit.edu>, by wolfe@wheaties.ai.mit.edu (John V. Wolfe): > A guy here at the MIT AI lab got a disk in the mail with no return > address. It contained a README file (included here), the TeachText > application, and a Stuffit archive containing some source code. The > listing of the filenames in the archive are included after the text of > the read-me file. Makes for very interesting reading. ... [ excerpts from the README file ] > The file called "Rom Src (Stuffit)" contains the complete > assembly language source to both Color QuickDraw and all > the hardware Equate files for the various Macintoshes ROMs. ... > The next mailing will consist of the complete source to the > hierarchical filing system and all the device drivers. Over > several weeks, we will distribute the entire source to the > Macintosh ROM as well as the source to System software > 6.0.3, Finder 6.1, and AppleTalk 2.0. System 7.0 will be > distributed as soon as we secure a copy of it. Our objective ^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ > at Apple is to distribute everything that prevents other ^^ ^^^^^ > manufacturers from creating legal copies of the Macintosh. ... I suppose I'll get flamed by the good socialist denizens of the net for this posting, but I've got a real problem with this. You may disagree with Apple's corporate policies. By all means voice those disagreements. If you wish, emulate Stallman et al. in boycotting Apple and encouraging others to do so. If you are an Apple employee, voice these concerns to your management, offer to resign, or resign. But the materials your friend received are stolen goods. There is no other way to characterize them. Those who distributed them, and are offering to distribute more, are not simply breaking the law, they have serious ethical problems. To accept employment by Apple, and to betray the trust that that entails, is simply unconscionable. I may not agree with the antics of the Apple management and lawyers. And I'll defend your right to improve on ideas. I'll contribute to Stallman's defense fund, if it comes to that. But the actions of "nuPrometheus" aren't the actions of brave freedom fighters, they are the actions of scum. Would you want one for an employee? A lab partner? A friend? Would you trust them with ANYTHING? =Ned Horvath=
neff@pitstop.West.Sun.COM (Mike Neff) (06/10/89)
In article <2801@wheaties.ai.mit.edu> wolfe@mintaka.UUCP (John V. Wolfe) writes: >A guy here at the MIT AI lab got a disk in the mail with no return >address. It contained a README file (included here), the TeachText >application, and a Stuffit archive containing some source code. The >listing of the filenames in the archive are included after the text of >the read-me file. Makes for very interesting reading. > >John Wolfe Disclaimer: I don't know what's going on, >wolfe@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu I just live here! If anyone thinks that Apple hasn't noticed this mailing they are much mistaken. Apple is really *PO'ed*! A front page article in the San Jose Mercury News this morning stated that Apple execs are "aggressively investigating" this incident and want to nab whomever's responsible for this and put them in jail. They publicly stated that if they find employees have been involved in this leak they will be fired on the spot and prosecuted. It is unlikely that other companies will use this ROM code if it is stolen in their products for fear of copyright infringement suits, etc. Also, the magazine Bay Area Computer Currents stated that it wouldn't accept any ads that anyone might try to put in as the letter instructed people to do to get more of this ill-gotten information. I would be *really* careful about posting anything you received from these guys onto the net, since you might be viewed as contributing to the problem and will likely have an FBI man show up on your doorstep! Speaking for myself and not as a Sun employee, we may all have differing opinions of how "open" a company should be with its technology and certainly Apple gets rubbed for guarding its technology perhaps too much. However, it's one thing for a company to openly license and make publicly available its technology and quite another for an individual to steal this technology without this company's permission. Anyone who advocates this deserves to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I too disagree with some of Apple's claims to ownership over some things under the guise of "look and feel", but ROM source code is clearly Apple's property and should be treated as such. Mike Neff mneff@sun.com Disclaimer: All opinions expressed above are completely my own and don't necessarily represent those of Sun Microsystems, Inc.
mae@vygr.Sun.COM (Mike Ekberg, Sun {GPD-LEGO}) (06/10/89)
I do not condone use of (allegedly) stolen material. In article <89160.093417DN5@PSUVM> DN5@PSUVM.BITNET writes: >Following up an article about an organization distributing sources to the >Mac ROMs and System. > >I think that this may actually make cloning the Mac Roms and system harder. I think a well accepted technique of legally reverse engineering technology is to have two groups, working in isolation from each other. First group uses whatever(legally, of course {:-), it takes to figure out what the X does, laser slice the die, disassmble the ROM, etc. This first group then generates a *complete* spec, warts and all. The second group then takes the spec. and generates the code, using only the spec. This technique was related to me by someone who had reverse engineered chips for a living. Claims they found several bugs in some chips, but left them in the spec. anyways to be compatable. Note under this technique, a complete, legally obtained specification is more dangerous to the owner of the technology. > Jay, etc.. (D. Jay Newman) > dn5 AT psuvm.bitnet >Disclaimer: > I am NOT a lawyer, so the above (including my name) should be taken as >possiblly, perhaps even likely, incorrect. ^ Same here, (except 'scuse the spelling)! # mike (sun!mae), M/S 8-04 "The people are the water, the army are the fish" Mao Tse-tung
mithomas@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Michael Thomas Niehaus) (06/10/89)
Apparently, Apple has distributed a message over AppleLink to a large portion of
the employees saying that if any Apple employee is found to be connected with
the ROM source code release, they will be facing immediate termination. If
they are lucky, that would be all that they would have happen to them. Can
you say liability and damages?
-Michael
--
Michael Niehaus UUCP: <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!mithomas
Apple Student Rep ARPA: mithomas@bsu-cs.bsu.edu
Ball State University AppleLink: ST0374 (from UUCP: st0374@applelink.apple.com)nagle@well.UUCP (John Nagle) (06/13/89)
In article <109301@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> mae@sun.UUCP (Mike Ekberg, Sun {GPD-LEGO}) writes: >>I think that this may actually make cloning the Mac Roms and system harder. > >I think a well accepted technique of legally reverse engineering technology >is to have two groups, working in isolation from each other. First group uses >whatever(legally, of course {:-), it takes to figure out what the X does, >laser slice the die, disassmble the ROM, etc. This first group then generates >a *complete* spec, warts and all. > >The second group then takes the spec. and generates the code, using only the >spec. > That's how Chips and Technologies, the primary maker of parts for PC clones, does it. > >Note under this technique, a complete, legally obtained specification is more >dangerous to the owner of the technology. > That's quite true. Given a complete specification of the interface offered to a Mac application, it would be straightforward to develop compatibility packages allowing one to run Mac programs on other 68000-based machines, such as Suns, etc. There are still "look and feel" issues, but it's not legally settled yet whether copyright protection really can be used to protect interfaces. It may well turn out that doing so is an antitrust violation. IBM tried to use patents and trade secrets to prevent others from building IBM-compatible peripherals for IBM mainframes in the 1960s and 1970s, and they lost in court consistently. Today, many vendors build equipment compatible with the machines of others, and it is settled law that one can do so. The same reasoning may turn out to apply to software interfaces. The effort by Atari to make Nitendo cartridges may well produce the litigation that settles this issue. As Mac applications get cleaned up, and more run under both UNIX and the Mac OS, the application interface will inherently become better defined. It should be possible today to develop an interface kit which allows the execution of "well-behaved" applications on Suns, Amigas, and such. A working definition of "well-behaved" is that the application must run on the full range of Mac hardware and operating systems. If it does so, it probably conforms to the interface spec as defined in "Inside Macintosh, vols I-N". And, of course, nothing in "Inside Macintosh" can be a trade secret, since those are published books. John Nagle