Mark Crispin <MRC@SU-SCORE.ARPA> (02/01/85)
Would it be possible for somebody who is actually a lawyer to make an authoritative statement about this on this list instead of all the flaming? Until Unix and personal computers came around, I had never heard of: . the output of compilers being proprietary to the owner of the compiler instead or (or in addition to) the owner of the source such that the owner of the source must pay a royalty to the compiler owner for selling software using that compiler . the compiler-supplied runtimes/subroutine library being proprietary to the point that any application which uses any of these subroutines must pay royalties to the compiler owner. "Let's see, I call SQRT twice, ATAN, and CEXP. That's $100 for SQRT, $250 for ATAN, and $350 for CEXP..." -------