From: jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk,comp.unix.bsd,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: ENOUGH! Re: BSDI/USL Lawsuit -- More Bad News for Human Beings...
Date: 22 Jan 1993 18:42:59 -0500
Organization: Mount Holyoke College
Distribution: inet
NNTP-Posting-Host: slab.mtholyoke.edu

In article <1993Jan20.230616.25164@igor.tamri.com> jbass@igor.tamri.com (John Bass) writes:
>After reading much of the topic it seems to be shaping up much
>as the Stalman vs. Industry debate. My views on such are
>neither short or to the point.

*grin*... correct... they are not at all to the point.

>First, the group at UCB, Joltz, BSDI, and others all have acted
>out a plan to attempt to place the AT&T/USL UNIX product into the
>public domain. A conspiracy based in false "Robin Hood" ethics.

Wrong.  None of the aforementioned have placed anything in the
Public Domain.  It's all copyrighted by them.  Furthermore, the
products or UCB/CSRG, BSDI, etc., are /not/ a product of AT&T/USL
anymore than all copiers are products of Xerox.

>I doubt the Studios, Screen Actors Guild, or the courts would allow
>the Trekies to rewrite every line/scene of each movie/episode (while
>preserving the plot and fabric of each story) in an attempt to place
>the Startrek industry into the public domain so that freely copyable
>and editable movies could by enjoyed by the self proclaimed public.
>The fact is, that to do so is blatantly illegal ... no matter how
>much a bunch of highschool/college drama school wantabe actors might
>cry about freedom of expression while tring ... it's WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!

Bullshit!  You /really/ don't know what you're talking about.  If I
want to put on a Star-Trek production, I can, so long as I do not
violate any specific copyrights.  BSD NET-2 does not violate any
specific copyrights of USL, and I'm quite confident that the outcome
of any legal action will prove that.

>From my view what UCB, Joltz, BSDI and others have done has neither
>advanced the art nor been in the UNIX industries best interest.

You don't think that UCB has advanced the state of the art of Unix?
I'm not going to even comment on this, because I can't imagine that
there's a single other reader of these newsgroups who would agree
with you.

>forethought and malace they incrementally attempted to place the UNIX
>operating system product into the public domain by re-writting it
>line by line while leaving the framework and the fabric of the system
>unchanged ... same global design, major algorithms, data structures,
>internal interfaces, etc ... to what end? Only to attempt to destroy
>AT&T/USL UNIX as a commercial product.

Most of the algorithms in modern USL Unix (V.4) WERE DEVELOPED BY
UCB/CSRG, and not the other way around!  Furthermore, UCB/CSRG didn't
rewrite Unix "with forethought and malice ... to destroy AT&T/USL
Unix", but rather they rewrote it under mandate from DARPA because
AT&T/USL Unix sucked horseshit and DARPA wanted a better Operating
System with networking built in.  When they were done they released
their work for free public distribution so that others could benefit
from it, as is fitting for projects funded by the taxpayers.  In other
words, I paid for the development of NET2, and now USL is trying to
steal it from me... and you're wondering why lots of people are upset
about this?

>They should have followed the example of other university research
>teams and done some REAL research to give us a guiding example of
>what OS's should look like in the next century instead of perpetuating
>the mistakes and frail framework of UNIX's 1960/70's design.

Horsepoopy... just because BSD-NET2 comes with a monolithic kernel
doesn't mean it's an ancient design.  And some of the "other
university research teams" you're talking about are using BSD-NET2 to
turn their microkernels into full-blown operating systems... a clever
microkernel does not an Operating System make.  And of course just
about everybody uses the networking API developed by CSRG as part of
the whole project, and many other features, such as the Filesystem,
which was /very/ advanced when it was released with 4.2BSD.

>The vast majority of programmers rely on the success of their
>employers for continued paychecks to pay for the basics plus
>toys we wish for a comfortable living.  While most of us truely
>enjoy our profession, I doubt most of us would continue if
>salaries topped out at $9k/year or we didn't have the dream of
>hitting the big one on some speculative development project/startup.

Personally, I'm not worried about my salary, although I might
start to worry if the world were crazy enough that USL were to
actually win this idiotic suit... if that happens I'll know that
creativity and innovation aren't worth shit in this world, and
that's what I'm counting on for my bread & butter, not some
twisted idea of intellectual monopolism (misrepresented as
'property rights'.)

>It's time we get out of the herd mentality and view the USL vs BSDI
>lawsuit as it really is ... a botched attempt by BSDI & Joltz to
>plagiarize UNIX. Let's not make folk heros of them over their petty
>actions. Lets focus instead on the other teams that are bringing us
>our future.

Have you considered the possibility that UCB and BSDI might consider
your article to be outright slanderous?  UCB didn't plagiarize
anybody, they developed a solid, original product that many, many
people value and rely on.  USL was merely parasitically profiting from
it because UCB happened to use Unix 32V as a starting point for their
development efforts.  In fact, it was BSD that made Unix take off as
an operating system... without the BSD, Unix as a product might well
never have gone anywhere.  USL profited directly and indirectly from
the BSD for over 10 years... they should have been content with that.
BSDI on the other hand performed a public service by taking the FREE
code from UCB and porting it to a platform where millions would be
able to benefit from it.

As to the legality and ethics of the whole issue, I look at it this
way... I could write a program today that is based on a proprietary
library from XCorp and sell it by either reselling XCorp licenses
along with it or requiring my customers to already have XCorp
licenses.  Now, once my program is at version 4.4 and I'm satisfied
with the state of its development, I decide I want to make it
independent of the XCorp license, and I write my own library to
perform the functions for which I had up to now been using the XCorp
library.  When I'm done, can XCorp sue me because my program was
originally based on a proprietary licensed product of theirs?  The
very suggestion seems rediculous, doesn't it?  But any programmer
knows that from the standpoint of the development work involved the
relationship between BSD-NET2 and USL Unix 32V is no different from
the relationship of my hypothetical product to the XCorp library after
I've replaced it with my own code.
-- 
Jurgen Botz, jbotz@mtholyoke.edu
Northampton, MA, USA