🚀 go-pugleaf

On 5 Sep 92 20:24:56 GMT, jbuck@ohm.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck) said:
NNTP-Posting-Host: ohm.berkeley.edu

jbuck> (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:

pcg> If I were USL I would sue Microsoft over Windows NT rather than UCB
pcg> over BSD, as Windows NT looks a much more terrible competitor to
pcg> SVR4 than BSDI. Unless USL is suing BSDI/UCB as the easier target,
pcg> to establish a precedent, and having done that ...

jbuck> BSDI alone, as a small startup, would be an easy target, but the
jbuck> University of California has billions in assets and a big
jbuck> full-time legal staff.  Not an easy target at all; it will cost
jbuck> USL big money.  Not to mention that by suing the Regents, USL is
jbuck> suing Pete Wilson, Willie Brown, Leo McCarthy, and every major
jbuck> politician and many of the major millionaires in California.

jbuck> I heard comments from one UC lawyer that sounded like she wanted
jbuck> to pursue a very aggressive strategy,

Ah, this gives a lot of hope. It's surely better than CMU's decision not
to take risks, and avoid getting sued, at least for now. Usually
Universities have a strong inclination not to make trouble for
themselves, and cave in with powerful corporation and potential
sponsors.
But maybe after all it is the university of *California*.

jbuck> disputing USL's ownership of Unix itself, given all the major
jbuck> contributions from Berkeley and elsewhere.

I doubt this strategy is tenable. Part of the educational UNIX source
license are clauses that state:

	1) all work done by the licensee with UNIX must be supplied free
	of charge to any other UNIX source licensee.

	2) all work done by the licensee *on* UNIX (the kernel) becomes
	the intellectual property of the licensor, AT&T/USL.

While 1) is OK (and vaguely reminiscent of the GPL in its details), 2)
might well mean that USL is going to argue that the entire BSD (and
Mach1/2/3, probably) kernel is theirs exclusively.

That would be bad news indeed.
--
Piercarlo Grandi                   | JNET: pcg@uk.ac.aber
Dept of CS, University of Wales    | UUCP: ...!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@aber.ac.uk