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From: plocher%sally@Sun.COM (John Plocher)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.windows.ms,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Apple gets favorable ruling
Keywords: Apple vs. Microsoft
Message-ID: <98755@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 13 Apr 89 04:36:15 GMT
References: <6271@bsu-cs.UUCP> <1068@Portia.Stanford.EDU> <2574@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <25056@mirror.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Reply-To: plocher@sun.COM (John Plocher)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 26

+---- In article <2574@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> Jeffrey A. Sullivan writes:
| software that everybody -- but EVERYBODY -- wants to run (e.g., an
| OS), and start making millions on it.  But all of the sudden, all of
| your competitors bring up amazingly similar OSes and your profits
| decline dramatically.  Wouldn't you seriously think about suing?
+----

No.

Case in point:
AT&T developed Unix.  All would agree that Unix has its own "Look and
Feel".  Yet there are dozens of companies out there developing and selling
"Unix Lookalikes" - Wenden's PC/NX, Tannenbaum's Minix, Flex, Idris, and
the Free Software Foundation's GNU project, to name a few.  Has AT&T sued?
No.  Have these "Clones" helped AT&T sell more Unix?  Sure.  Unix is now
very popular and many people want the REAL THING.  Never mind that Gnu or
SunOS (:-) or [whatever] is better, the AT&T label means a whole lot.

Now, if AT&T were still selling V6 Unix and was losing money because
everyone else had a BSD 4.3 system, AND if they couldn't keep up with the
state of the art anymore, THEN I'd think that they would call in the
lawyers and see if they could make some money that way...

Remember IHMO and all that...

    -John Plocher