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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!destroyer!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!eff!world!bzs
From: bzs@ussr.std.com (Barry Shein)
Subject: Re: UNIGRAM's article on the USL-BSDI suit
In-Reply-To: drg@bubba.ma30.bull.com's message of 3 Aug 92 09:59:31
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References: <1992Aug1.042344.23428@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <l7k5fqINNgc9@neuro.usc.edu>
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Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1992 21:10:35 GMT
Lines: 74
From: drg@bubba.ma30.bull.com (Daniel R Guilderson)
> 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.
No it's not, not at all.
Please, why are you speculating about things you obviously know almost
nothing about in public?
For example, you do know that Boston Univ is over $50M into Seragen (a
biotech company they bootstrapped recently)? Or that Harvard helped
bootstrap Genentech with similar (probably more) investments? What are
MIT's holdings/past-investments in Symbolics, Thinking Machines,
Draper, etc? Probably over $100M total to date.
I've heard USL's net worth quoted as in the $125M range.
>It may not be without precedent (I don't know) but it seems misguided
>to me.
Well, I suppose without anything resembling facts or information you
are free to draw any conclusion you like.
>I'm sure there are many better focused investments that could
>be made with that kind of money.
Why are you sure. Do you have some sort of experience in 8-10 digit
portfolio management? Cornell has been known to toss around $300M in
pure speculation on the Stock Market. And ya know what, to them it's
not a huge amount of money. Not when you hold an endowment on the
order of $10B.
>Once they have purchased USL, what incentive is there to change
>tactics?
Because the precedent AT&T appears to be seeking threatens much of
those research institutions' intellectual property and lays the way
for billions of dollars in claims against them.
But I said that already, not sure why saying it again will help.
>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.
You have the most bizarre view on these things.
Are you perchance like 19 years old and making this up as you go
along?
>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. ;-)
It's already happened.
But of course I wouldn't expect you to be aware of any of this at this
point.
--
-Barry Shein
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