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From: ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie )
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: AT&T copyrights (was Re: Swedish copyright laws)
Message-ID: <538@brl-sem.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 23-Dec-86 17:16:10 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-sem.538
Posted: Tue Dec 23 17:16:10 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 23-Dec-86 23:43:20 EST
References: <8612171607.AA09065@EDDIE.MIT.EDU> <82@ames.UUCP> <101@ames.UUCP>
Organization: Electronic Brain Research Lab
Lines: 39

In article <101@ames.UUCP>, fouts@orville (Marty Fouts) writes:
> AT&T has never to my knowledge claimed ownership of software someone developed
> using a Unix system, or of changes someone else made to the Unix system.  They
> "merely" restricted your right to distribute software directly derived from an
> AT&T distribution.
As a matter of fact, many years ago they announced that you were free to use
programs that included parts of the licensed binary libraries as you pleased
without any other arrangement with AT&T.

> The qustionable nature comes from the prices AT&T is now charging for a
> product over which they hold a monopoly.  But that's what the market wants.

I'm not sure monopoly is the word.  There have been several totally
UNIX compatible non-AT&T operating systems on the market for a long
time.  These failed through no anti-competetive schemes of AT&T.

> If the people who buy Unix thought it was valuable enough to do so, they
> would have long ago have done what Stallman is trying to do, provide an
> alternative.

I feel no animosity towards Stallman's aim to create a usable software
system that is free.  I don't believe that software sales and licensing
is the evil that he does, but he is not campaigning to outlaw it, only
to counter it with his own free product.  Stallman feels that the software
hoarding counters the development of the great software innovations that
came out of MIT in the previous decade.  My only regret is that RMS is
spending so much time and effort redoing ten year old programs to make
them free rather than developing the next innovative advancement in
computers.

Perhaps, RMS is right.  UNIX was developed in an open environment before
anybody ever started in on it as a commercial product, most of the innovative
improvements come as a result of University or Government funded work that
makes these changes available to everyone.  A competing operating system,
totally commercially based has failed.  But one man's fruit is another's
emetic, there are ardent UNIX-haters that dislike UNIX for precisely the
things that were caused by it's open evolution.

-Ron