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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!hp9000.csc.cuhk.hk!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!caen!destroyer!uunet!olivea!news.bbn.com!mips2!mips2!drg From: drg@bubba.ma30.bull.com (Daniel R Guilderson) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: AT&T vs. BSDI --> 4.3BSD-NET2 distribution requires AT&T license!!! Message-ID: <DRG.92Jul31154706@bubba.ma30.bull.com> Date: 31 Jul 92 22:47:06 GMT References: <l6rld6INN3dh@neuro.usc.edu> <1992Jul28.060822.29603@serveme.chi.il.us> <Bs9nLo.I2n@cs.psu.edu> Sender: news@mips2.ma30.bull.com (Usenet News Manager) Organization: Bull World Wide Information Systems, Billerica MA USA Lines: 22 In-Reply-To: ehrlich@cs.psu.edu's message of Fri, 31 Jul 1992 19:34:31 GMT In article <Bs9nLo.I2n@cs.psu.edu> ehrlich@cs.psu.edu (Dan Ehrlich) writes: If USL/AT&T can convince a court that NET-2 is a "derived work" the implications are unfathomable. Would this mean that any code in NET-2 would now require USL/AT&T licenses? Would Van Jacobsen's TCP/IP code then require a license? Obviously not. Otherwise, Microsoft would be able to claim that every application written for DOS is a derived work of DOS. TCP/IP is an application/system which happens to run on UNIX among other platforms. Is TCP/IP a derived work of DOS? It was written for DOS (PC/TCP among others). The answer is no; it is not derived from DOS nor UNIX. It might be derived from something else but there was no functionality in either DOS or UNIX which approaches that of TCP/IP so what could it possibly have been derived from? The cat/type program maybe? Richard Stallman is right when he says that software copyrights are evil. This is totally bogus. Stallman copyrights every single piece of code he writes. He puts all his code under the GNU license. He has never claimed that software copyrights are evil. User interface copyright is a completely different ball game.