🚀 go-pugleaf

Forwarded-For: rms@ai.mit.edu
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 90 13:20:02 EDT

I hope this taste of the shape of things to come in the computer
industry will wake enough of us up before it is too late...


Date: Fri,  3 Aug 90 10:51:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: Nicholas John Williams <njw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
To: staff@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Subject: TWM Virtual Desktop, Look & Feel Lawsuits etc.

As many of you know, there was a version of TWM available recently,
which had patches (written by Dave Edmondson of Imperial College) which
added a "Virtual Desktop" facility. This allowed you to spread your
windows out over virtual space and select which area to view at any one
time.  The feature was modelled after the Solbourne Window Manager,
performing the same sort of tasks as their Virtual Desktop.

Wednesday, the patches allowing TWM to do this were placed into the
contrib area on expo.lcs.mit.edu.

Following this, Dave Edmondson yesterday received a letter from Paul
Lippe, the vice president of Solbourne stating that he had "engaged in
unauthorized copying of Solbourne's virtual desktop utility feature".

Legal discussions are currently underweigh and, until further notice,
the vtwm in the windowmanagers locker has been made unavailable.

Nick.
njw@athena.mit.edu
njw@doc.imperial.ac.uk