*BSD News Article 5977


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From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: Catch What They're Saying About Us...
Message-ID: <Oct.2.18.11.19.1992.2766@geneva.rutgers.edu>
Date: 2 Oct 92 22:11:19 GMT
References: <Sep.26.02.07.48.1992.16929@athos.rutgers.edu> <1992Oct1.032932.6773@unislc.uucp>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 29

erc@unislc.uucp (Ed Carp) writes:

>Not to flame Charles, but I find it hard to believe that if the courts find
>that the NET-2 distribution *does* contain AT&T proprietary code, that they
>will not issue a "cease and desist" order prohibiting UCB from distributing
>the NET-2 code.  The issue of whether or not derivitives of NET-2 are
>"non-commercial" or not is irrelevent.  I don't agree with your friend on
>his interpretation - but what you or your friend or I or Bill Jolitz feel
>about the issue is irrelevent, too.  What the judge says is the only
>relevent issue.

I'm not the best one to discuss this, but you will note that claims
are being made other than simply that NET-2 contains ATT code.  There
is also a claim that Berkeley exceeded the scope of their educational
license.  I think (and I hate to speak for him) that my lawyer friend
thought the question of whether Berkeley had used the ATT product as
the basis of commerial work might not depend upon whether the final
product had any ATT code in it.  He didn't go so far as to predict
what a final outcome might look like if the court accepted such a
theory.  One could imagine that they might decide that indeed Berkeley
had developed software for commercial use on a system that ran a
version of the Unix(TM) operating system licensed only for educational
use.  In compensation for this dastardly deed, they would owe ATT the
cost of a commerical Unix license.  This alleged offense would be
independent of whether the code they developed has any ATT code in it.
This would be a Pyrrhic victory indeed for ATT.  I am not predicting
this result, nor am I saying I would agree with it.  I'm just trying
to caution you that the issues he saw in the discussion were somewhat
different than those that we as hackers see.