[TUHS] V7 Addendem

[Jon Steinhart]

Random832 writes:
> On Tue, Dec 5, 2017, at 20:07, Warren Toomey wrote:
> >  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)

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.