7 Dec
2017
7 Dec
'17
12:39 a.m.
On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:15 AM, Jon Steinhart <jon(a)fourwinds.com> wrote:
Random832 writes:
I really think Jon is correct here. The behavior was all left over from
the 1956 consent decree, which settled the 1949 anti-trust case against
AT&T.
As the recipients of the AT&T IP, we used to refer the behavior as "UNIX
was abandoned on your doorstep." Throughout the 60s and 70s, the AT&T sr
management from the CEO on down, were terrified of another anti-trust
case. And of course they got one and we all know what judge Green did to
resolve that in 1980.
I described the activities/actions in detail in my paper: *"**UNIX: A View
from the Field as We Played the Game" *which I gave last fall in Paris.
The proceeding are supposed to go on line at some point. Send me email if
you want the details and I'll send you a PDF. I'm holding off cutting and
pasting here for reasons of brevity. For an legal analysis I also
recommend: *“AT&T Divestiture & the Telecommunications Market”,* John
Pinheiro, Berkeley Technical Law Journal, 303, September 1987, Volume 2,
Issue 2, Article 5 which I cite in my paper.
Clem
On Tue, Dec 5, 2017, at 20:07, Warren Toomey
wrote:
Can't answer your question directly, but I think that some of this was
the result of the prior consent decree banning them from being in the
data business. I seem to recall that it was technically illegal for
them to sell SW and don't know how giving it away would have been viewed.
Ken tried to send it out, but the lawyers kept
stalling and stalling and stalling.
When the lawyers found out about it, they called every
licensee and threatened them with dire consequences if they
didn’t destroy the tape, after trying to find out how they got
the tape. I would guess that no one would actually tell them
how they came by the tape (I didn’t).
I have a question, if anyone has any idea... is there any recorded
knowledge about *who was driving*? That is, beyond "the lawyers", who on
the business side of AT&T was making the policy decisions that led to
the various sometimes bizarre legal actions that caused problems for the
Unix world, and to what end (was there some way they expected to profit?
liability concerns?)
In other words, what was the basis of the legal department's mandate to
try to shut these things down? (This question is also something I've
wondered for some non-Unix stuff like the E911 document, but that's not
relevant to this list)