[TUHS] V7 Addendem

[Clem Cole]

On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 11:15 AM, Jon Steinhart <jon at fourwinds.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
​I really think Jon is correct here.  The behavior was all left over from
the 1956 consent decree, which settled the 1949 anti-trust case against
AT&T.

As the recipients of the AT&T IP, we used to refer the behavior as "UNIX
was abandoned on your doorstep."  Throughout the 60s and 70s, the AT&T sr
management from the CEO on down, were terrified of another anti-trust
case.  And of course they got one and we all know what judge Green did to
resolve that in 1980.

I described the activities/actions in detail in my paper: *"**UNIX: A View
from the Field as We Played the Game" *which I gave last fall in Paris​.
The proceeding are supposed to go on line at some point.  Send me email if
you want the details and I'll send you a PDF.   I'm holding off cutting and
pasting here for reasons of brevity.  For an legal analysis I also
recommend: *“AT&T Divestiture & the Telecommunications Market”,* John
Pinheiro, Berkeley Technical Law Journal, 303, September 1987, Volume 2,
Issue 2, Article 5 which I cite in my paper.

Clem
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