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Path: utzoo!lsuc!dave
From: dave@lsuc.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Two process communication programs
Message-ID: <1902@lsuc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Jun-87 20:24:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: lsuc.1902
Posted: Mon Jun 29 20:24:37 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Jun-87 02:47:09 EDT
References: <2071@emory.UUCP> <776@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: dave@lsuc.UUCP (David Sherman)
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 43
Summary: contracts can deem unreal things to be

In article <776@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>In article <447@mtxinu.UUCP> ed@mtxinu.UUCP (Ed Gould) writes:
>>The license between the Regents of the University of California and
>>the party to which they supply a 4BSD distribution does not distinguish
>>anything as to its origin.  The UC license states that the licensee
>>will treat *all* of the material received under that license *as if*
>>it had been received from AT&T, under the terms of the licensee's
>>AT&T source license.  Redistributing it without sufficient care is a
>>violation of one or both of those licenses.
>
>Right.  And this is why I think the BSD license agreement cries wolf,
>thereby undermining its own credibility.  Schedule A, which lists the
>files that may not be distributed without AT&T's permission, includes
>/usr/src/new/mh/READ-ME.  Here is an extract from this file:
>
>        This version of MH is in the public domain...
>
>Now we are faced with a choice:  Should we believe the BSD license
>agreement, which says this file is not in the public domain, or should
>we believe the file itself, which says it and a hundred others ARE in
>the public domain...?

Regardless of whether the file is actually in the public domain,
any two parties may agree by contract to treat it as proprietary,
for the purposes of the contract.  Obviously Berkeley chose not
to go to the effort of labelling things as containing AT&T origins
or not; it was far simpler to consider all of BSD as containing
AT&T origins.

Since the BSD license agreement, a binding contract entered into
voluntarily by parties who knew what they were signing, says that
you must treat all of BSD as proprietary, then you are bound by
that agreement if your access to the files comes about as a
result of the license.  If you obtain a copy of MH, or whatever,
through some source that does not involve a BSD license containing
that limitation, then you can do with it as you wish.

David Sherman (yes, I'm a lawyer, though I profess no particular
	expertise in this field)
The Law Society of Upper Canada
Toronto
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