21 Sep
2022
21 Sep
'22
9:25 p.m.
On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 8:59 AM Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
below in blue ...
On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 9:47 AM Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote:
That makes a lot of sense. When there was a name, it was preserved, but a
huge amount of the sources had nothing at all in the source files to
identify it. One big area of contribution was into the kernel where the
options sometimes contained the name of where the code came from. In the
2BSD kernels we see eg TEXAS_AUTOBAUD, MENLO_OVLY, MENLO_KOV, MENLO_JCL,
MPX_FILS, CGL_RTP and a bunch of UCB_ names. It's clear the non UCB ones
came from elsewhere, but there's no info on where they came from (they are
documented in setup.5 at least so I know what they are). So given the
sparseness of the early marking for provenance, the coments make more sense
and give a better timeframe to it.
Warnerᐧ
...
So, maybe it did happen, but I find no extant evidence of a copyright
being
removed and replaced by Berkeley. If anything, once files started being
marked
with a copyright notice, they seem to be retained over several releases
and
on the 2BSD series where the code was merged into.
On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 6:36 AM Rob Pike <robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The legal term '*copyright*' and historical term of '*provenance*.'
I
agree with Warner that I know of few if any cases where copyright was not
maintained when it was in the code itself. And as he points out, please
grep through the archives and I think that will be found to hold true.
But I also think Rob rankle comment is fair. Joy and was noted for
recognizing cool ideas and adding them into 'Berkeley UNIX. The line at
the time was he took ideas and '*peed on them to make them smell like
Berkeley*.' For example, 'Berkeley Joy Control' came from Kulp via Europe
and MIT, the network stack famously started at BBN, and a lot of the
support for limits and user controllers from Australia.
Yes, the CSRG team did do a great deal of innovation as well as
integration, but the line between the two was not always easy to see from
the outside. And I think developers outside of UCB sometimes felt (to use
Rob's words) 'rankled' for CSRG getting credit for some of innovation
that
really belonged to others, because the CSRG team was the distribution
vehicle.
It was a long time ago but it rankled at the time
(and even came up in
my Bell Labs interview): that copyright notice replaced whatever was there
before. Code written and copyrighted by other institutions was absorbed
into the Berkeley distribution and reattributed without credit. Joy told me
later that the lawyers made them do it. He was probably telling the truth,
but that didn't make it OK.
-rob
I think there are two different concepts that are getting mixed up here.