Return to BSD News archive
Received: by minnie.vk1xwt.ampr.org with NNTP id AA304 ; Sun, 31 Jan 93 14:02:08 EST Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd,alt.suit.att-bsdi Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!sgiblab!rtech!ingres!daveb From: daveb@Ingres.COM (Dave Brower, DBMS hack, [510] 748-3418) Subject: Re: UC Berkeley Embroiled in Computer Software Lawsuit Message-ID: <1993Jan29.200419.7285@pony.Ingres.COM> Followup-To: alt.suit.att-bsdi Originator: daveb@lotus In-reply-to: gwh@soda.berkeley.edu (George William Herbert) Reply-To: daveb@lotus (Dave Brower, DBMS hack, [510] 748-3418) Organization: Ingres, an ASK Company References: <1993Jan26.221218.8133@igor.tamri.com> <106742@netnews.upenn.edu> <1993Jan27.215738.12384@igor.tamri.com> <1kbtpf$e9h@agate.berkeley.edu> Date: 29 Jan 93 20:04:18 GMT Lines: 57 John Bass notes that there may be some copyright and/or trade secret problems in the Net2 code caused by what appear to be "cut, paste, and delete" operations. These may be very significant, and I'm in no position to form an opinion based on the facts or the law. However, he does drag in a few other points that are much more debatable. One is a claim of infringement on the Bach book, and the other is a claim of plagiarism. I'd like to believe the claim based on Bach is a non-issue. As you can't copyright ideas, only code, and there is only pseudo-code in Bach, I don't see any way any there can be infringement on Bach in the Net2 source. Indeed, I don't see any way to infringe Bach in a real set of _any_ source unless you copy him word for word in comments. As to "plagiarism", I submit this is also a straw-argument without bearing on the BSDI or Net2 release. Plagiarism is an issue of academic morality, and has _nothing_ to do with business arrangements, copyright, or trade-secret law. BSDI and Net2 are not academic vehicles, and considering them as such is facetious. Considering the moral side of plagiarism, there is a strong argument that any Software Engineer who, within the scope of binding copyright and trade-secret regulation, doesn't borrow and reuse the ideas of existing working systems is a fool. The legal distinctions are in where the borrowing and use falls with respect to the copyrights, trade-secret protection, and patent interest. Thus the major issue regarding Net2 and the suit are the factual claims that some files in Net2 violate the copyright of V32, or any valid trade-secret restrictions not made moot by Bach and other open literature. AT&T has not yet released the details of the points of claim, so for now we can only offer conjecture about the merits. It's far from clear to me how copyright could, would or should be applied to non-functional code fragments like those cited by Bass. It's further not clear to me that the "structure and naming" claim could/would/should be enforceable, as it seems very close to the murky "look-n-feel" debate. It _is_ clear that the CSRG is/was playing intentionally close to the line, and that reasonable people can disagree where they landed. The final ruling will happen in court or in a settlement. It won't be in the court of public or net opinion. It's disingeuous to pull Bach and plagiarism into the public discussion about the legality. Bach isn't part of the complaint, and plagiarism isn't a legal issue. I'd like to think we all regret it's down to lawyers arguing. cheers, -dB -- Windows/NT - the VMS of the 90s