18 Mar
2024
18 Mar
'24
1:27 p.m.
On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 5:24 PM Douglas McIlroy
<douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote:
Fantastic story, and talk about a true "Perry Mason" moment for the
lawyer. I'm sure it was also fertile material for stories at cocktail
parties for the rest of his days.
- Dan C.
There was lawyerly concern about the code being
stolen.
Not always misplaced. There was a guy in Boston who sold Unix look-alike programs. A
quick look at the binary revealed perfect correlation with our C source. Coincidentally,
DEC had hired this person as a consultant in connection with cross-licensing negotiations
with AT&T. Socializing at the end of a day's negotiations, our lawyer somehow
managed to turn the conversation to software piracy. He discussed a case he was working
on, and happened to have some documents about it in his briefcase. He pulled out a page
disassembled binary and a page of source code and showed them to the consultant.
After a little study, the consultant confidently opined that the binary was obviously
compiled from that source. "Would it surprise you," the lawyer asked, "if I
told you that this is yours and that is ours?" The consultant did not attend the
following day's meeting.