Re: [TUHS] Prime Time Freeware <- Sun User Group tapes

As always, John Gilmore rocks... (John, can you tell folks about the history, rationale, and text of the Sun-1's PROM identification message?) I have two legal war stories to relate, offhand... # AT&T I tried to find a way to get permission to include copies of text files (both vanilla and modified, IIRC) that were part of the "binary" release. (I thought it might be useful for folks to have backup and/or "improved" versions.) I was flatly informed that all files in a binary distribution were, by definition, binary (not text). So, we had nothing to discuss. I never did manage to break through that legal stonewall. # Sun The other story (fortunately!) ended more successfully. You see, Sun's legal staff had drafted a "minimal" agreement that folks _donating_ bits were expected to sign off on. IIRC, it ran on for about twenty pages (!). John and I were both appalled and tried to tell the lawyer we met with that the authors and organizations involved wouldn't sign off on anything like this; indeed, they wouldn't even read it. Since John was pretty incensed, I got to play Good Cop. IIRC, I asked John to list the issues that he thought reasonable for the agreement to cover. With some grumbling, he came up with a set of issues whose legalese filled one side of a (letter-size :-) page. I then turned to the Sun lawyer (who was actually trying to be helpful and make things work) and asked him to tell us about any _critical_ issues John had left out. However, I only gave him a one-page budget. Adding the mutually acceptable issues brought the agreement up to two pages, which I got John (with a bit more grumbling) to accept. The lawyer then had the (unenviable) task of getting Sun to sign off on it. He did, and SUG was able to get donation sign-offs and produce a useful tape (whew!). I'm sure it helped that the folks doing the first tape were working at LLNL... -r