Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!SEAS.UCLA.EDU!bilbo.gregh
From: bilbo.gregh@SEAS.UCLA.EDU (Gregory Holmberg)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Summary of AT&T Open Look Product Overview
Message-ID: <8805110100.AA06996@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
Date: 10 May 88 19:54:20 GMT
References:  
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 48

> Sorry to bother you if you aren't the right person, but what is meant by:

> > will provide increased application programmer productivity.  The OPEN LOOK
> > standard will be found initially in two Application Programmer Interfaces
> > (APIs), one from Sun Microsystems and one from AT&T.  The OPEN LOOK standard
> > will be licensed to other vendors also.
> * ........^^^^^^^^....................................................^^^^^^^^

> I agree that an IMPLEMENTATION of the standard can be licensed, but can the
> standard itself be licenced ?

To quote the document:

2.3 Why Call It OPEN LOOK GUI?

A major trend in computer systems today is the trend to open systems.  Open
systems are those which are are available from multiple vendors.  Thus,
procurements can be competitive and so common platforms can be developed that
preserve customer investments in applications software, documentation, and
training.

As part of its ongoing and vital commitment to open systems, AT&T is responding
as the industry changes by defining standards of the UNIX operating systems and
its derivatives.  The POSIX standard being developed in the United States, the
X/OPEN standard being developed in Europe, and the efforts of the Sigma group
in Japan all aim to expand a common definition of a portable and open operating
system.  This common definition can then be used by any number of vendors to
produce different implementations of the exact same operating system.

To support open systems, AT&T will make OPEN LOOK GUI available for use in all
standard systems, including appropriate licenses to all relevent copyrights,
patents, and trademarks that pertain to OPEN LOOK GUI.

End Quite.

Thirty-one of the 42 pages of this document descibe just the look and behaviour
from the user's point of view.  The rest describes two particular implemen-
tations of it.  It seems to me that when AT&T uses "OPEN LOOK GUI" they mean
the look and behaviour (the parts of which not invented at AT&T, they have
licensed from Xerox) and not a particular implementation.  So the above
statement seems to say to me, that they are willing to license the look and
behaviour, to be implemented any way the licensee sees fit.  We'll see...

Greg Holmberg
Locus Computing Corporation
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