Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac:33218 comp.graphics:6088
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!sun-barr!newstop!pitstop!neff
From: neff@pitstop.West.Sun.COM (Mike Neff)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Macintosh ROM Sources
Keywords: Macintosh, ROM, sources, nuPrometheus
Message-ID: <706@pitstop.West.Sun.COM>
Date: 9 Jun 89 22:29:33 GMT
References: <1210@tnoibbc.UUCP> <2801@wheaties.ai.mit.edu>
Reply-To: neff@pitstop.UUCP (Mike Neff)
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc., Mountain View, CA.
Lines: 42

In article <2801@wheaties.ai.mit.edu> wolfe@mintaka.UUCP (John V. Wolfe) writes:
>A guy here at the MIT AI lab got a disk in the mail with no return
>address.  It contained a README file (included here), the TeachText
>application, and a Stuffit archive containing some source code.  The
>listing of the filenames in the archive are included after the text of
>the read-me file.  Makes for very interesting reading.
>
>John Wolfe			Disclaimer: I don't know what's going on,
>wolfe@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu			I just live here!

If anyone thinks that Apple hasn't noticed this mailing they are much mistaken.
Apple is really *PO'ed*!  A front page article in the San Jose Mercury News
this morning stated that Apple execs are "aggressively investigating" this
incident and want to nab whomever's responsible for this and put them in
jail.  They publicly stated that if they find employees have been involved in
this leak they will be fired on the spot and prosecuted.  It is unlikely that
other companies will use this ROM code if it is stolen in their products for
fear of copyright infringement suits, etc.  Also, the magazine Bay Area
Computer Currents stated that it wouldn't accept any ads that anyone might
try to put in as the letter instructed people to do to get more of this 
ill-gotten information.

I would be *really* careful about posting anything you received from these
guys onto the net, since you might be viewed as contributing to the problem
and will likely have an FBI man show up on your doorstep!

Speaking for myself and not as a Sun employee, we may all have differing
opinions of how "open" a company should be with its technology and certainly
Apple gets rubbed for guarding its technology perhaps too much.  However,
it's one thing for a company to openly license and make publicly available
its technology and quite another for an individual to steal this technology
without this company's permission.  Anyone who advocates this deserves to
be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  I too disagree with some of
Apple's claims to ownership over some things under the guise of "look and 
feel", but ROM source code is clearly Apple's property and should be
treated as such.

Mike Neff
mneff@sun.com

Disclaimer:  All opinions expressed above are completely my own and don't
necessarily represent those of Sun Microsystems, Inc.