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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!hp9000.csc.cuhk.hk!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!sdd.hp.com!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!uknet!axion!micromuse!godot!dj From: dj@godot.co.uk (DJ Walker-Morgan) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: AT&T sues BSDI Message-ID: <BsIsCp.AJ@micromuse.co.uk> Date: 5 Aug 92 16:55:36 GMT References: <9208041705.14@rmkhome.UUCP> Sender: news@micromuse.co.uk Reply-To: dj@godot.co.uk Organization: MicroMuse - The SPARC dudes Lines: 26 Nntp-Posting-Host: godot In article 14@rmkhome.UUCP, rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly) writes: >In article <jim.712885425@oinker> jim@ferkel.ucsb.edu (Jim Lick) writes: >I spoke with someone at Mark Williams about this. Coherent has been ported >to at least four platforms. 68000, 80x86, Z8000, and PDP11. Their patent >is for a method that allows them to crossmount file systems between all the >architectures that they support. The patent was applied for back in the >early 80's, after AT&T forced them into showing them source code. Dennis >Ritchie made the final decision that it was AT&T free. However, they lost >a very large account because AT&T had been loudly claiming that Mark >Williams pirated UNIX source code. Perhaps the patent filing could be >called justifiable paranoia. The last time I looked at the patent text, it read as a patent for byte ordering, very snazzily dressed but "When you are talking to a network use a unified byte order" seems to me about as obvious as "remember to breath when you go to sleep tonight"... I don't recall any mention of filesystems in the patent. --- ============================================================================ dj@micromuse.co.uk |"In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune Voice +44-71-352-7774 | but this is reality so give some room" Fax +44-71-351-7834 | (Sir) William Bragg ------------------------+--------------------------------------------------- Non-standard Disclaimer : "I didn't do it, it wasn't me, I wasn't there"