Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!caip!topaz!root From: root@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Charles Hedrick) Newsgroups: net.usenix Subject: Re: announcing the availability of 4.3BSD Usenix manuals Message-ID: <6035@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> Date: Wed, 1-Oct-86 01:11:50 EDT Article-I.D.: topaz.6035 Posted: Wed Oct 1 01:11:50 1986 Date-Received: Thu, 2-Oct-86 21:25:26 EDT References: <1594@bu-cs.bu-cs.BU.EDU> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 46 Our 4.2 documentation says that it is copyright and can be reproduced only under license. Contrary to what others have said, I don't know of many computer vendors who allow you to reproduce their manuals without charge. However I think that in this case the issue is not one of charge, but of copyright control. I believe that selling these manuals in University bookstores to the public is technically a violation of the license agreement. If you check the various licenses, you will probably find that the University is only allowed to sell manuals to its students and employees. This is carried out by giving the manuals to the bookstore and instructing the manager's pet poodle to make sure that no one other than authorized people buy the manual. The poodle wags its tail, and that is all there is to it. Since it is not very pratical to check for student ID cards when selling manuals, and nobody is damaged by having others get copies, no one worries about any more stringent enforcement. However there are a set of people who if you ask them are required to say that the restriction exists, and who if you notify them of violations may be required to attempt to stop them (on the legal grounds that if somebody knows that their rights are being violated and does nothing about them, they may to a certain extent be considered to be waiving them). This means that if enough of a stink is made about this subject, somebody in ATT may at the very least feel it necessary to notify the poodle that he has not been carrying out his job. I think you will find that the online man pages came on a tape that says it is copyright and refers to your binary license agreement. That agreement almost certainly says that you may produce copies of the documentation only for your own use. The problem as I understand it is that some lawyers are afraid that if you let people reproduce and distribute things without control, you can lose your copyright. This can lead to practices such as vendors asking you to place a notice on the cover saying "Only available to Rutgers students, faculty, and staff", but not to make any attempt to enforce it, or to license fees of $0.01 per copy (not per page -- per copy of the entire document) for which no one bothers to issue an invoice. From what I know of the licensing agreements, Usenix is correctly interpreting them. If I were a Usenix officer, I would continue to follow a strict interpretation of the agreements. Usenix might ask the relevant lawyers how much enforcement they want. Perhaps it could be agreed that it would be enough to say in all announcements that these manuals are available only to users at licensed sites. This would solve the problem of getting things to individual Usenix members. I will not discuss in this forum what I think of a legal system that requires this kind of malarky.