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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: AT&T/USL CD-ROM Review Process
Message-ID: <BzJ9Cn.8IB@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1992 00:57:58 GMT
References: <1ge0aaINNm4d@neuro.usc.edu> <1992Dec13.165418.5021@sbcs.sunysb.edu> <1992Dec13.183240.23944@blaze.cs.jhu.edu> <1992Dec14.165913.6896@fcom.cc.utah.edu> <1992Dec15.033540.483@cheops.qld.tne.oz.au> <9212152245.31@rmkhome.UUCP> <wilko.724689346@spoetnix.idca.tds.philips.nl>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 17
In article <wilko.724689346@spoetnix.idca.tds.philips.nl> wilko@russia.idca.tds.philips.nl (Wilko Bulte) writes:
>Yuck. All this makes me feel infected: I've seen AT&T and SCO source. Will
>this make me forever a no-go for GNU-ish software?
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.
--
"God willing... we shall return." | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
-Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry