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From: rb@ccird2.UUCP (Rex Ballard)
Newsgroups: net.unix,net.lang,net.legal
Subject: Re: Are any parts of UNIX in public domain?
Message-ID: <771@ccird2.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Apr-86 13:19:57 EST
Article-I.D.: ccird2.771
Posted: Thu Apr 17 13:19:57 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Apr-86 14:15:25 EST
References: <481@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU> <518@looking.UUCP> <2437@teddy.UUCP> <755@ccird2.UUCP> <282@maynard.UUCP>
Reply-To: rb@ccird2.UUCP (Rex Ballard)
Organization: CCI Telephony Systems Group,  Roch, NY
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Xref: watmath net.unix:7660 net.lang:2370 net.legal:3284
Summary: If it's proprietary, say so in the source.

There are two ways to be certain that the sources are at least
partially covered.  One is the copyright notice, ie:
"Copyright 1985 Computer Consoles Incorporated - all rights reserved"
the other is a full page (25 line) "Trade Secrecy notice".  The
latter is often used for software which may go to the military even
though it is not written explicitly FOR the military.  The reason
it should be a full page is so that the reader won't "accidentally"
read something he shouldn't.

It is to your advantage legally to register the copyright, but
it isn't absolutely necessary.

The real point here is that SOME kind of notice should be put
on each piece of source that you do NOT want people using
indescriminately.  This way, the person is properly warned
and is willfully violating the rights of the author.

This has nothing to do with the legality.  It might be illegal
under the liscence agreement to copy ANYTHING on that machine
(including your own code) to another machine.

The problem that often arises is that someone tries to "re-invent the
wheel" because public domain or low royalty software gets mixed in with
the "all or nothing" stuff.  People have get severely punished for
trying to "reverse engineer" software that is available via anonymous
FTP and is totally unrestricted, or only partially restricted, or
can be purchased for reasonable rates.

On many of our source directories we have README files that state that
anything in this directory is "property of XXX" and cannot be used in
non-XXX products (several of our targets are non-unix).  Much of this a
result of confusion over the availability of common functions such as
"printf".  We have four versions.  One for BSD liscenced systems, one
for AT&T, and two for non-unix systems.  I haven't seen the AT&T
version, but the two non-unix versions are so totally different, there
could be no question of copying (one was done without even reading
the man page).

Disclaimer:  The opinions above are mine, I'm not a lawyer.
	     If you're not sure about which software is protected
	     on your system, check with your company lawyer.