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From: kevin@unisoft.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.misc,net.legal
Subject: Re: The (c) on UNIX?
Message-ID: <249@unisoft.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Apr-84 00:26:48 EST
Article-I.D.: unisoft.249
Posted: Sun Apr  8 00:26:48 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Apr-84 05:42:35 EST
References: <991@vax2.fluke.UUCP>
Organization: UniSoft Corp., Berkeley
Lines: 54

One: It has been my understanding that the Lyons (sp?) book published
in Australia was generally available in Australia. In other words,
I could walk into any bookstore and without flashing my AT&T V6
software agreement, buy a copy of said book. Now it seems to me
that if this is so, the trade secret on the V6 kernel would be 
pretty well shot. I doubt that they confiscate those books when
you enter the US through customs.

Two: However, it is also my understanding that the book only contained
the kernel sources and not the utilities. The kernel is of somewhat
limited use without the utilities.

Three: It seems that AT&T's distribution of the UNIX sources
to universities was a two-edged sword. It surely got them market
penetration at a time when they were under the consent decree. On
the other hand, I'd hate to go into court as AT&T and have to explain
why I thought the OS deserved trade secret protection after giving it
to an institution dedicated to the dissemination of ideas. In addition,
my experience with universities has been the same as I've heard documented
here; that being that the professors teach it without recourse to a 
nondisclosure agreement and everyone leaves with a bootleg source tape.

Four: I believe that the AT&T software agreement states that the 
signer is under no duty to keep the information proprietary should he/she 
obtain the information from a third party without the breach of the 
agreement. This is pretty standard trade secret language and would
probably be implied even if it weren't in the agreement.

Fifth: Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that there are 
people on this network who have binary-only licenses for UNIX. That
is, they have never received source from AT&T. Now, the System V 
customer agreement for binary licenses contains no nondisclosure 
provision (a change from System III). The sole protection AT&T asks
for is a contractual promise not to copy the binary except as necessary
for use on a single CPU. So:

    Fifth.1: What happens when one of the binary only types taps into
	     this network and gets an eyefull of some transmitted source?

    Fifth.2: Since most of the new UNIX systems on non-DEC processors are
	     not optimized, it would be a fairly straightforward thing
	     to disassemble it and pair the disassembled code up to
	     the namelist. Most of the C language structures seem to match 
	     up to some pretty distinctive assembly code. This approach
	     would get you the utilities fairly quickly.  Finally, you
	     could get a fair ways along the road of documenting the
	     sources by reading the Lyons book.

Does anyone have any better guesses on these issues? As usual, 

UNIX is a trademark of Bell Labs (but who cares?)

						Kevin