Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.wanted
Subject: Re: source for troff -> versetec stuff
Message-ID: <7465@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Jan-87 17:05:28 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.7465
Posted: Thu Jan  1 17:05:28 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Jan-87 17:05:28 EST
References: <254@netxcom.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 38

> An artical reminded me that vcat was written
> at U of Toronto and might be available to us
> poor souls with out source licenses.  Does
> anyone know if this is true and if so where
> I might get a copy?

Difficult situation.  Yes, vcat was written at U of T.  As far as I know,
it contained no licensed software and thus in principle there is no bar to
distributing it to non-source licensees.  However, there are about four
serious complications:

1. The U of T license form forbids commercial use, as I recall, although
	in the past this was generally interpreted to permit anything
	other than resale or fee-for-access public-access use.  I can't
	say what changes in the form or the interpretation have been made
	in recent years, since I stopped being involved with the software
	distribution apparatus at CSRG (now CSRI) quite a while ago.

2. I'm not sure the stuff is even still available; it's probably been a
	very long time since it was last requested.

3. Back in those days, non-source licenses were essentially nonexistent,
	so probably nobody ever paid attention to the licensing issues
	involved.  It is possible that the license agreement for that
	stuff demands a source license even though it's probably not
	strictly needed.  From what I recall, I very strongly suspect that
	the U of T distribution that included vcat also included a bunch of
	modified Bell software, in source form of course.

4. You probably do not want the ancient U of T vcat; Berkeley did not just
	copy it verbatim, they fixed bugs and adopted it to a modernized
	system (vcat was written for a mutated V6).  I believe they also
	did work on the fonts, and that's important:  given a description
	of the CAT output format from troff, vcat itself is not that hard
	to write, but supplying it with good fonts isn't so simple.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry