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From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Subject: Re: AT&T/USL CD-ROM Review Process
In-Reply-To: henry@zoo.toronto.edu's message of Sun, 20 Dec 1992 00:57:58 GMT
Message-ID: <BZS.92Dec20003921@world.std.com>
Sender: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
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Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1992 05:39:21 GMT
Lines: 46
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>Nope. I've seen source distributions you've never even heard of :-), and
>I still write redistributable software.
>
>There are a couple of touchy areas -- notably the kernel -- where, if I
>were writing such a thing for redistribution, I'd probably deliberately
>use a very different basic approach than the one used in code I've seen.
>If you end up producing something very similar to proprietary code, it's
>best to be able to document the process by which you arrived at it without
>making use of forbidden knowledge. That can get tricky; it's easier to
>avoid the similarities in the first place.
That's all very rational Henry, but it's not at all clear that we're
dealing with rationality here, there are lawyers involved!
The problem is whether some software product employer out there is
going to start asking prospective hires whether or not they have seen
internals, and if so avoid hiring that person "just to avoid trouble
down the road." You may not even hear the reason to argue the point,
"Thank you for your interest...".
Worse, I don't know that it's illegal for AT&T to make available to
employers a list of names of people who they believe have had more
than passing acquaintance with Unix kernel sources. Such a list could
be generated from various sources (like comp.unix.wizards archives.)
Insane? So was Joe McCarthy, and look at all the trouble that
mentality caused (P.S. Alger Hiss was just cleared by the KGB as never
having done any spying for the Soviet Union, he's now in his 80's and
his name is almost synonymous among a lot of people with "commie spy",
very sad, wonder if Richard Nixon, the prosecuting attorney, is going
to apologize or even acknowledge this?)
This is bad voodoo.
What's worse is that AT&T/USL just have nothing to say about it all,
so we are free to assume the worst, it's the only safe option at this
point. These guys want some sort of monopoly back, and that's that.
--
-Barry Shein
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