On Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 1:24 PM, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:

I think we're trying to get at accurate

history, right?

Agreed... apologies to all if this is a strange thread, but frankly its refreshing to try to tease this out in my own mind and I respect so many of you here. Thank you for listening to my rambling and my dealing with my dyslexic typing.

So what is written there was not how I felt at all. I personally felt
like AT&T had a case, I thought it was copyright not trade secret.

So did I at the time!! So did most people I knew. That was exactly the problem.

...
I found routines

that were bit for bit identical in both in less than 5 minutes. The one
I remember was bmap(), I found a couple of others that I don't remember
(just remember there were more) and I gave up in disgust. I was pretty
disappointed that CSRG considered this not AT&T source, it was.

Agreed... the argument... I'm not saying it was correct... was that the code for bmap and like was the obvious code and any reasonable programmer would have written it that way. Again .. not a lawyer ... but as the law has been explained to me... obviousness is one place in copyright law where code can be duplicate. So the question, come if there are when does it go over the line and become infringement.

Don't ask me.... I'm not defending or saying one way was right or wrong. In fact, like you, I was really worried, I too thought the case was about copyright and I thought, like the Apple/Franklin Computer Case (which I personally knew a little about but thats a different story), believed that AT&T would win (which pissed me off - even though I had a number of friends at AT&T - i remember grousing at some of them - they would not defend their employees for their actions - I'm not sure they were happy either). But like you, I started to help the Linux folks too.

That said, I will also say I thought morally.... Bostic and team was right. By that point the core of what I consider "UNIX" really had been rewritten and it ws not the same thing I had run on the PDP-11 at CMU years before. I too, wanted a "freely available PC/UNIX" (with sources). Even if I was as, Chet suggested, a card carrying member of the "BSD Club."

So, maybe I was splitting hairs. Could be. I wanted BSD, I had helped make it happen. Like Larry, it was a system I cared deeply about. I did not yet have children, at that point, probably felt similar to the way I feel today about them. I have put lot emotional energy into BSD's success. All of my early career. I had started companies around it etc... I watch Microsoft unfairly crap on the UNIX community etc... Can't say I wasn't too happy with Sun in those days too, as I felt Scotty was almost a slimy as Billy G. I had a pretty low opinion of the "boys in the coats and ties" and this court case was just another example of "TPC" (see the movie "The Presidents Analyst" for the reference) doing it again.

But it was the AT&T lawyers that made the case about trade secret not copyright. They want to win everything and they lost it all. That called karma: "Squeeze too tight, while you keep the bird, it will die."

That left me with a strong feeling that AT&T was going to win.

ditto..

I was

wrong but it didn't matter, BSD was sort of dead to me.

Ah, that was the difference... I was still rooting for phoenix to rise from the ashes. I was hoping there was a still one more chance.

I can't tell

you how painful that was for me, I was very much a BSD guy, SunOS was
BSD plus the stuff you would want fixed, fixed.

I think I have an idea. I was very nearly the in same spot.

Linux wasn't BSD but it wasn't going to get taken away from me like
SunOS was taken away and now BSD looked like it was going to be taken
away. It just looked like a bad investment to work on BSD so I worked
on Linux.

Ah... and I was hedging my bet. but trying to help both. I admit, I wanted BSD to win. Which is why I also tried to get OSF to make an alternative. OSF/1 vs. Linux at the point (again as a pure technology play) was the same as BSD vs Linux. Linux had a long way to go.

I just wanted a PC/UNIX (basically with the BSD extension and managed like a BSD system) that I run on the PC/386 that was no more than the cost of DOS/Win or the like. If that could be found and better yet, source were available (and here Chet is probably right - because I had always been part of the club, I guess I was less worried, as I suspect my employers would always have sources and thus I would too).

Clem