*BSD News Article 2659


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From: meissner@osf.org (Michael Meissner)
Subject: Re: AT&T sues BSDI
In-Reply-To: terry@spcvxb.spc.edu's message of 25 Jul 92 10:14:13 GMT
Message-ID: <MEISSNER.92Jul28141402@tiktok.osf.org>
Sender: news@osf.org (USENET News System)
Organization: Open Software Foundation
References: <1992Jul22.221515.23550@tfs.com> <QUANSTRO.92Jul24122923@lars.StOlaf.edu>
	<1992Jul25.061414.3401@spcvxb.spc.edu>
Date: 28 Jul 92 14:14:02
Lines: 19

In article <1992Jul25.061414.3401@spcvxb.spc.edu> terry@spcvxb.spc.edu
(Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.) writes:

|   If AT&T/USL wins this case, this means that any vendor can claim that they
| have rights of "intellectual ancestry" or some such balderdash over any pack-
| age found on the net. What would you think if they claimed that AT&T/USL had
| "rights" to GCC because the specification of C was originally developed by
| them?

In this specific case, AT&T cannot do this, because they specifically
gave up any rights to the "C" language as part of the ANSI (and now
ISO) standardization.  ANSI would not have allowed a standard
controlled in this fashion.  I believe that AT&T did do the same thing
for the interfaces that have become POSIX interfaces.
--
Michael Meissner	email: meissner@osf.org		phone: 617-621-8861
Open Software Foundation, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA, 02142

You are in a twisty little passage of standards, all conflicting.