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From: mjr@osiris.UUCP (Marcus J. Ranum)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.unix.wizards,comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: Who owns Unix(tm)? (was: Re: Mach, the new standard?)
Message-ID: <1357@osiris.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Aug-87 15:55:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: osiris.1357
Posted: Mon Aug 24 15:55:50 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Aug-87 06:13:55 EDT
References: <1665@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <8381@utzoo.UUCP> <797@Pescadero.ARPA> <2232@xanth.UUCP>
Organization: The Bavarian Illuminati, Inc.
Lines: 26
Keywords: Gross overbearing ripoff!
Summary: The bigger they are, the harder they hit.
Xref: mnetor comp.arch:1907 comp.unix.wizards:3865 comp.os.misc:98


	AT&T owns UNIX because they have enough laywers that if you lined
them all up end-to-end you could walk across their backs all the way to
Mars. Supposing that you tried to institute legal proceedings: they could
keep it tied up in court until hell freezes over, or the last IBM PC is
melted down for scrap copper. Not only would they do that, but the cost of
the lawyers would be passed on to the phone users of America.

	One might as well ask how it is that UCB owns UCB UNIX, that was
paid for in part by DARPA, and is thus really owned by the taxpayers. One
might as well ask why we fight a covert war with prime-time news coverage.
One might even ask when people will understand the difference between MSDOS,
and operating system, and Wordstar. 

	The FSF is one possible solution, but I am not holding my breath.
There are MINIX ports out there, XINU ports, etc, etc, etc. There are lots
of 'C' and even BASIC compilers out there, so if you want to re-write
BSD (please include shared memory) UNIX, I'll be happy to run it when
you put it in the public domain.

--mjr();
-- 
If they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical,
go crude. I'm a very technical boy. So I get as crude as possible. These
days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire
to crudeness...			         -Johnny Mnemonic