Path: utzoo!telly!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!texsun!pollux!txsil!steve From: steve@txsil.lonestar.org (Steve McConnel) Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss Subject: Re: Actual case of hoarding public domain code? Message-ID: <263@txsil.lonestar.org> Date: 16 Dec 89 00:07:09 GMT References: <129245@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <6672@columbia.edu> Reply-To: steve@txsil.lonestar.org (Steve McConnel) Organization: Summer Institute of Linguistics, Dallas TX Lines: 28 In article <6672@columbia.edu> kearns@cs.columbia.edu writes: >Does anyone know the facts about Scribe? >My recollections, which are shaky at best, say that Brian Reed wrote >Scribe, only to have it usurped by an evil company. >I would like to know the story in greater detail, if anyone recalls it. > >-steve Brian K. Reid wrote Scribe while a CS grad student at Carnegie-Mellon. (I was a EE grad student at the time, and still have a copy of the second edition of the Scribe User's Manual, dated 25 July 1979, for Scribe version 2A(400).) Someone convinced Brian of the commercial potential of the program, and he sold all commercial rights to a company which I think was formed for the purpose of selling Scribe and related software. There was a big hassle for awhile with C-MU trying to claim ownership and therefore collect all the profits, but as i recall, the final decision was that, as a grad student, Brian indeed had the rights to Scribe and could sell the program and collect the profits if he wished. Whether it was a *good* thing for Scribe to go commercial or not is another question, but it certainly wasn't a case of an Evil Corporation usurping a helpless programmer. Disclaimer: my memory certainly isn't perfect, and my perceptions at the time may not have been totally accurate either. -- Stephen McConnel Summer Institute of Linguistics PHONE: 214-709-2418 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road UUCP: ...!{texbell|convex|pollux}!txsil!steve Dallas, TX 75236 Internet: steve@txsil.lonestar.org