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Received: by minnie.vk1xwt.ampr.org with NNTP id AA561 ; Fri, 05 Feb 93 01:01:18 EST Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!uunet!not-for-mail From: sef@Kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) Newsgroups: alt.suit.att-bsdi,comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: George William Herbert's Challenge - Part 2 (opening arguments) Date: 3 Feb 1993 11:25:45 -0800 Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd. Lines: 39 Sender: sef@ftp.UU.NET Message-ID: <1kp67pINNson@ftp.UU.NET> References: <106742@netnews.upenn.edu> <1993Jan27.215738.12384@igor.tamri.com> <1kbtpf$e9h@agate.berkeley.edu> <1993Feb3.002534.5637@igor.tamri.com> In article <1993Feb3.002534.5637@igor.tamri.com> jbass@igor.tamri.com (John Bass) writes: >I will later show that Net-2 and 386BSD release by UCB violates the >AT&T ownership by maintaining the same "methodology, algorithms and >sequence of processes" in nearly all of the code cloned from both >UNIX source and Bach puedocode. First of all, 386BSD was not released by UCB. It was released by William and Lynne Jolitz, and is based largely upon the Net/2 tape, just as BSD/386, from BSDi, is. >*** In the mean time, I urge readers to review the above, find your own >copy of Bach and examine the clock, tty and bio code in 386BSD. **** So you adamit that Bach is enough to implement the code you claim was stolen? There is *no* kernel code in Bach. There is, however, a discussion of algorithms, and pseudocode. Having implemented a version of execve() from the pseudocode in Bach, I can say right now: that pseudocode is *not* the end-all. Moreover, since Bach was pretty clearly intended as a textbook in classes, which could be expected to implement the things discussed in the book, trying to claim that it is not intended to be used is pretty stupid. And lastly, if the pseudocode in Bach is everything necessary to implement UNIX, then USL has already lost their trade secret status, and the copyrights of certain distributions of UNIX will almost certainly be challenged during the lawsuit. You have yet to demonstrate any copyright violation. I have seen and worked with USL source code (SysVr2 through SysVr4), BSD source code (from 4.1BSD), 386BSD source code, and BSD/386 source code, and any similarity to the USL source code I maintain is due either to the publication of the algorithm in Bach, a thorough knowledge of the original code and a desire or need to make it compatible, or the fact that USL took the code from Berkeley to begin with. You can't copyright ideas, or algorithms. (Although you can patent them.)