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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!mips!mips!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!news.bbn.com!mips2!mips2!drg From: drg@bubba.ma30.bull.com (Daniel R Guilderson) Subject: Re: UNIGRAM's article on the USL-BSDI suit Organization: Bull World Wide Information Systems, Billerica MA USA Date: 3 Aug 92 09:59:31 Message-ID: <DRG.92Aug3095931@bubba.ma30.bull.com> Lines: 37 In-Reply-To: bzs@ussr.std.com's message of 1 Aug 92 22:28:16 GMT References: <1992Aug1.042344.23428@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <l7k5fqINNgc9@neuro.usc.edu> <l7k6maINNgeg@neuro.usc.edu> <l7k72rINNgfn@neuro.usc.edu> <leb.712651912@Hypatia> <BZS.92Aug1172816@ussr.std.com> Sender: news@mips2.ma30.bull.com (Usenet News Manager) In article <BZS.92Aug1172816@ussr.std.com> bzs@ussr.std.com (Barry Shein) writes: The fastest and most economical way to resolve this: Several major research universities form a consortium, each chips in a few dozen millions and just buys USL. I have problems with this. How many universities would be able to meet this challenge. Assume that "a few dozen millions" means at least $36 million. That's an incredibly large amount of cash for any educational institution to be investing in non-educational projects. It may not be without precedent (I don't know) but it seems misguided to me. I'm sure there are many better focused investments that could be made with that kind of money. Their investment could be recouped and made profitable by legitimate licensing and technology interests, and their intellectual property ranging from X-Windows to NET-2 etc would be protected to the extent that any adverse precedent could be used in the future to make claims against those properties. Once they have purchased USL, what incentive is there to change tactics? Consider that there would then be a small cabal of "major research" companies who control UNIX. Why would they want other universities to compete for their CS students? If the consortium were really to happen, I believe that it would be no more generous than USL is now. If those same universities can sink similar amounts of monies into bio-technology companies (Genentech, Seragen, etc) and other ventures of much higher risk (after all Unix seems fairly well established) I think they would do well to seriously consider this proposal. I don't think huge multi-national educational conglomerates would be a panacea for the problems we face in the intellectual property arena. ;-) Sorry, I couldn't resist carrying your idea to its logical conclusion. ;-)