From: connor@neuro.usc.edu (Sarah Jeanette Connor)
Newsgroups: alt.suit.att-bsdi
Subject: Reply to USL from a FICTIONAL CHARACTER (was Re: We could blow up USL)
Date: 8 Sep 1992 13:22:20 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: neuro.usc.edu

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>sdo@usl.com on august 24, 1992 writes:
>
>Ted,
>
>In case you are not monitoring the discussion on the BSDI suit, I've
>attached a couple of articles showing the general direction that things
>are taking.  There is also a thread of discussion among people who are
>concerned that they will be prohibited on working on any operating system
>software if they ever worked with UNIX source code.
>
>The title of the tread entitles "We could blow up USL" is fairly disturbing.
>
>In the other article I am including, an AT&T employee questions why 
>AT&T is involved in this action.
>
>Scott Orshan
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>fec@mhuxo.att.com on august 21, 1992 writes:
>
>What exactly do you have in mind?
>
>Frank Carey
>Bell Labs Computer Security
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From connor Fri Aug 21 13:16:25 1992
To: fec@mhuxo.att.com
Subject: Re:  USL

I was going to say something like -- have you ever seen the movies
Terminator I or Terminator II -- but, seeing as you are from security
at a company which might be related in some way to USL, I should be
a bit more carefull -- and say that the posting was intended as an
in character allusion to a purely fictional woman who has a habit of
blowing up computer companies as a means of saving the world from an
equally fictional future nuclear holocost.

Many people in academia have responded that they found this posting
to be a humorous relief to an extremely serious situation where it
seems to many of us that AT&T is unfairly trying to 'create new law'
which would make it virtually impossible for anyone who has seen a
copy of the AT&T (R) UNIX (R) source codes to work on development of
any other operating system software.  Many academicians have come to
feel a Star Wars type 'Evil Empire' with virtually unlimited financing
is unfairly trying to crush a tiny band of 'software rebels' who are
trying to make a go of marketing a free BSD unix based on the 4.3BSD
NET2 version of unix which has been freely distributed to hundreds of
thousands of academic sites by anonymous ftp.  

No doubt if you read through the USENET newsgroup comp.unix.bsd you
will see that many in academia are cancelling entire campuses worth
of AT&T telephone contracts, writing to AT&T's president, and getting
their campus general counsel to work up amicus briefs, and doing any
other thing they can to help UC Regents/BSDI defeat AT&T/USL's case.

Nevertheless -- NO ONE IS SERIOUSLY OFFERING TO DO ANYTHING ILLEGAL
-- AND NO SERIOUS THREAT IS INTENDED -- if you want to reexamine my
posting, I only solicited information about security arrangements --
I never suggested anything should be done with that information.

Best, Sarah Jeanette Connor

A Fictional Character from
Terminator I & Terminator II
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