lauren@RAND-UNIX.ARPA (01/13/85)
I'm getting somewhat disgusted at these messages trying to find ways to ridicule the Unix trade secret agreements by poking holes in this or that. It's as if people are now saying that since AT&T *didn't* behave in a dictatorial manner when handling Unix licenses (by not making *every* person who *touches* the system sign *everything*, and not designing the system so that *nothing* was readable, etc.) they are now subject to being laughed at. People seem to be saying that since AT&T *didn't* act like a scrooge when it came to making the system available, and *didn't* play big brother watching over all Unix users 24/hrs/day, they are now fair game for ridicule. Hogwash. I think these attitudes show a profound lack of ethics, regardless of the legal issues (and those issues are considerably more complex than messages in this list might lead one to believe -- there's been one hell of a lot of MISinformation being passed around this list on this topic.) I'd like to know where some of these Unix gurus would be today if AT&T hadn't used trade secret licensing (just about the only way they had to make Unix available at the time) in the manner they did. Most likely many of you would be spending all your time doing FORTRAN programming on a TOPS-20 system today. (No, I'm not knocking TOPS-20 -- not here, anyway...) I for one (and I don't care if I'm a cult of one on this score) think that AT&T deserves one hell of a lot more respect on this issue than many people seem to be giving them. A personal opinion, of course. --Lauren--
BostonU SysMgr <root%bostonu.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA> (01/14/85)
RE: Message of Lauren Weinstein.... Hear, hear. I agree. One of UNIX's strongest features is the wide availability of the sources to everything and it's design which makes it very source supportable by reasonably able people. I have wasted more of my life on systems that either wouldn't release the sources at a reasonable price (or any price) or, when you got the sources, were so impenetrable that they were nearly useless. It would be sad to see AT&T bitten badly because of their sanity. It would be worse yet to see them lose that sanity, I think some of the reactions in this column have been over fears of the latter (like all the unbundling now going on.) Unfortunately, lawyers will decide all this which means most anything could happen. -Barry Shein i = 0 ; ^ Bona fide UNIX trademarked source code!
aps@decvax.UUCP (Armando P. Stettner) (01/18/85)
Please, please, move the conversation regarding AT&T's UNIX policies and such to another news group (like net.philosophy or net.religion)!! THIS DOES NOT BELONG IN UNIX-WIZARDS! PLEASE!!!! Armando.
geoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning) (01/18/85)
In article <7294@brl-tgr.ARPA> Barry Shein writes: >RE: Message of Lauren Weinstein.... > >Hear, hear. I agree. One of UNIX's strongest features >is the wide availability of the sources to everything >and it's design which makes it very source supportable >by reasonably able people. I have wasted more of my >life on systems that either wouldn't release the sources >at a reasonable price (or any price) or, when you got >the sources, were so impenetrable that they were nearly >useless. It would be sad to see AT&T bitten badly because >of their sanity. It would be worse yet to see them lose >that sanity, I think some of the reactions in this column >have been over fears of the latter (like all the unbundling >now going on.) Hang on there, Lauren and Barry! Let's remember that this started out as a question as to whether AT&T has the right to prohibit you from selling a yacc-based program "because it includes /usr/lib/yaccpar". The rest of the discussion has been a legalistic one about whether they could make that claim stand up in court. It is not unnatural to extend such a discussion to the more general question of whether AT&T could make ANY trade secret claim about Unix stand up in court. Most of these messages have been cross- posted to net.legal, where this discussion belongs -- it's only in unix- wizards because of the original note about yaccpar. I cannot remember a single person stating or even implying that they approved of stealing any part of Unix. I certainly would not like to see AT&T lose its ownership of Unix, because I think that would lead to impossible fragmentation of versions. But that does not prevent me from noticing that AT&T has been rather sloppy in an area where the law does not permit sloppiness. Perhaps AT&T should be forgiven for being sloppy because they were good guys; to my mind that's a political question. As to the original note about yaccpar, I am of the opinion that an attempt to restrict the sale of yacc-derived parsers (other than perhaps collecting a fair royalty on the yaccpar part) is restraint of trade. You can fight that with antitrust law, or you can fight it with the trade secret law. The principle that disallows patents, copyrights, and trade secrets on knowledge available to the general public is designed to prevent such restraint of trade. In fact, (here I go again shooting my mouth off about something I know nothing about) I wouldn't be surprised if you could beat a royalty attempt on yaccpar by proving that it was substantially similar to the one published by the Software Tools people. That's an interesting part of trade secret law that I don't know enough about. In any case, I'm not suggesting stealing Unix (though I would fight an attempt to keep me from selling yacc-processed programs just as hard as an attempt to collect a royalty on cc-compiled programs). I *am* suggesting that AT&T continue its efforts to clean up its act (much as that causes pain to the small 68000-type companies). And I am also suggesting that AT&T had better face up to the fact that part (not all, I hope) of Unix has found its way into the public domain, and be prepared to deal with that fact when somebody *does* try to do something unethical. Personally, I'd like AT&T Unix to include a directory full of "supported public domain software". Seems a pity for AT&T to not use its muscle to standardize things like the strings packages and give them good support. -- Geoff Kuenning ...!ihnp4!trwrb!desint!geoff
Paul Anderson <anderson@nrl-css.ARPA> (01/23/85)
Does anybody at SRI-CSL know anything about the INFO-LAW bbd? According to file "addr" on directory "/u/msgs/info-law", somebody at SRI-CSL was the moderator for this bbd. Apparently, the last message on this bbd was in July 1983. How about getting this thing started again. The first candidates are the "UNIX and AT&T" and the "YACC" discussions. Anybody interested? Let's hear from you.