trevor@GRASP.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Trevor Darrell) (09/20/87)
From: "Daniel L. Cerys" <Cerys@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU> >SUN held a NeWS technical seminar near Boston last week where they >described what could be done. Of course, if you aren't using their >sources, you can do anything you want; SUN doesn't have any claim to >Postscript protocols. What do they mean ``PostScript protocol''? Adobe's red book or their _NeWS_Manual_? Do they lay any claim to their extensions to the PostScript langauge? To make the subject even more touchy, are they going to put their class facility in the public domain? If not I don't think they can call it part of PostScript. Sun-Specific-PostScript perhaps, but not part of any PostScript standard. I would like to be able to use the class facility, which I consider fantastic, in all my PostScript work, not just in NeWS-specific code, and not worry about distribution rights. It seems to me Sun has been holding back on clarification of these legal issues. (aside from copyright notices) --trevor
gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) (09/21/87)
trevor@GRASP.CIS.UPENN.EDU (Trevor Darrell) wrote: > are they > going to put their class facility in the public domain? Owen Densmore of Sun presented the object oriented programming tools for NeWS (classes, etc) at the Usenix 3rd Computer Graphics Workshop in Monterey in 1986. The paper, which begins on page 117, includes a complete listing of the implementation of classes in PostScript. You can get the proceedings from Usenix, and they hold only a copyright on the collection of papers; the ownership of the papers themselves remains as it was. Owen's paper is published without a copyright notice, so it is effectively public domain. Legalese aside, I doubt that Sun would have included the entire implementation listing if they didn't want you to use it, so have at it! -- {dasys1,ncoast,well,sun,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@toad.com