Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!apple!mauxci!eci386!jmm
From: jmm@eci386.uucp (John Macdonald)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: wanted: UNIX or clone
Message-ID: <1991Apr11.141408.27169@eci386.uucp>
Date: 11 Apr 91 14:14:08 GMT
References: <1991Mar21.175359.15633@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <9103232223.30@rmkhome.UUCP> <450@jgaltstl.UUCP> <9104031454.03@rmkhome.UUCP>
Reply-To: jmm@eci386.UUCP (John Macdonald)
Organization: Elegant Communications Inc.
Lines: 25

In article <9104031454.03@rmkhome.UUCP> rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly) writes:
|
|Coherent is a UNIX clone based upon V7 with some V5 extensions.  At one point,
|Mark Williams Company had to prove in court that they did not use AT&T code.
|I have heard that they had to pay AT&T some money, and were told that they
|could not sell their product as UNIX.

Are you sure of this?  The last I heard (which was from one of
the developers at Coherent, but this was about ten years ago)
was that Mark Williams had a visit from a group of AT&T lawyers
and some AT&T technical people (including Ken Thompson, if I
recall correctly).  The technical people tried a number of
commands and quickly determined that Coherent did not trip any
of the particular bugs or endcases that they tried.  The lawyers
found it hard to belive that they could be convinced so quickly
that it wasn't copied code, so the technical people had to go
back and do some checking - they, naturally enough, tested some
of the programs in the /usr/games directory.

It is possible that there was a later court case - all of the
people that I knew working at MWC have long since gone to other
companies.
-- 
sendmail - as easy to operate and as painless as using        | John Macdonald
manually powered dental tools on yourself - John R. MacMillan |   jmm@eci386