From: ddean@sapphire.risc.uni-linz.ac.at (Drew Dean)
Subject: An old quote from Dennis Ritchie
Keywords: dmr's Turing Lecture
Reply-To: ddean@risc.uni-linz.ac.at
Organization: UNI-LINZ
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1992 16:40:04 GMT

Upon re-reading Dennis Ritchie's Turing Award Lecture from 1983, I found  
some interesting (and relevant) material.  While these quotes are out of  
context, I think they're still interesting......All typos are  
mine...Without further ado, here it is:
[Reproduced without permission from "ACM Turing Award Lectures: The First  
Twenty Years, 1966-1985, ACM Press, 1987, ISBN 0-201-07794-9]
--------------------------Begin Quotes------------------------------------
The last research distribution was the seventh edition system, which  
appeared in 1979; more recently, AT&T began to market System III, and now  
offers System V, both products of the development group.  All research  
versions were "as is," unsupported software; System V is a supported  
product on several different hardware lines, most recently including the  
3B systems designed and built by AT&T.

But an inevitable aspect of computer science is the creation of computer  
programs: objects that, though intangible, are subject to commercial  
exchange.

As the intensity of research in a particular area increases, so does the  
impulse to keep its results secret.  This is true even in the university  
(Watson's account [12] of the discovery of the structure of DNA provides a  
well-known example), although in academia there a strong counterpressure:  
Unless one publishes, one never becomes known at all.  In industry, a  
natural impulse of the establishment is to guard proprietary information.   
Researchers understand reasonable restrictions on what and when they  
publish, but many will become irritated and flee elsewhere, or start  
working in less delicate areas, if prevented from communicating their  
discoveries and inventions in suitable fashion.  Research management at  
Bell Labs has traditionally been sensitive to maintaining a careful  
balance between company interests and the industrial equivalent of  
academic freedom.  The entrance of AT&T into the computer industry will  
test, and perhaps strain, this balance.

...Perhaps this effect [corporate conservatism] explains why so few  
interesting software systems have come from the large computer companies;  
they are locked into the existing world....The working examples of  
important new systems seem to have come either from entrepreneurial  
efforts (Visicalc is a good example) or from large companies, like Bell  
Labs and most especially Xerox, that were much involved with computers and  
could afford research into them, but did not regard them as their primary  
business.
-----------------------------End Quotes----------------------------------
If you're interested, I'd strongly encourage you to read the original  
talk.  I've tried not to slant things too much, but inevitably, I have.   
Some questions: if Bell Labs still controlled Unix(tm), would the suit  
have happened ?  If AT&T were not in the computer business, would there be  
a suit ?  How do you define the difference between "research software" and  
a commercially-supported product ?  I think the last paragraph I quoted is  
quite telling re: the size of CSRG & BSDI.

Personal bais: against the suit.

Drew Dean
ddean@risc.uni-linz.ac.at
PS: Read Ken Thompson's lecture, too.