🚀 go-pugleaf

>   From: Ray.Nickson@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Ray Nickson)
>
>   If ideas are copyrightable, and user interfaces are copyrightable,
>   then AT&T/Bell Labs presumably hold a cpr on the entire Unix
>   interface---this is what we're worried about for GNU.  How would this
>   effect the standards effort?  How can something that could at a later
>   date be copy restricted be the subject of a standard?

AT&T would have a hard time making restrictions on Unix clones.

A few years ago the Air Force specified that they wanted an OS that
satisfied the System Five Interface Definition.  A vendor that
offered a competing OS sued, saying that the request for bids had
preselected the vendor.  AT&T (I think) defended the suit, saying
that although Unix was the only OS that happened to fit the
definition, there was no reason someone else couldn't write another
OS that did the same, and won the suit and the contract based on
this argument.  Sounds like they shot themselves in the foot to me
-- after making such an argument they could not claim that the Unix
interface was proprietary.

This was in one of the industry rags, maybe Unix world, in early 1987.

-- 
Michael D. Crawford
Oddball Enterprises		Consulting for Apple Computer Inc.
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oddball!mike@ucscc.ucsc.edu	The opinions expressed here are solely my own.

		alias make '/bin/make & rn'