[TUHS] Re-implementations/Clean-Rooms et al.

[Warner Losh]

On Thu, Sep 8, 2022 at 3:52 PM Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 8, 2022 at 12:51 PM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>
>> Both Coherent and 4.4BSD have stuck out to me as examples of
>> not-quite-so-clean-room implementations that did well enough (more than
>> enough for BSD) and didn't die a fiery death in litigation (as much as USL
>> tried...).
>
> BSDi/UCB *vs. *USL was a different kettle of fish altogether.   As has
> been discussed here extensively (and needs not to be repeated), that suit
> was about *Trade Secrets and >>ideas<< that make up what we call UNIX.*
>  The real interesting thing about that case is that had USL/AT&T won, the
> repercussions for the industry would have been way beyond just BSDi - *but
> all of the UNIX clones* and many of us on this list who had been
> "mentally contaminated" with AT&T's ideas (I still have my 'mental
> contamination' button somewhere in my archives).
>

Yes. Indeed. It devolved to a copyright battle with the ultimate result
being a preliminary ruling that 32V (and V6 and V7 likely) had no copyright
protection because AT&T had distributed too many copies without the
required (at the time) copyright notices...  That preliminary ruling is
what forced the settlement of the suit, and is the reason that 4.4BSD-lite
had a bunch of files with AT&T copyrights on them with permission to
redistribute liberally...

These days, in open source cleanroom is rarely done except in extraordinary
cases. It's easier to read the code and reimplement because copyright
covers only the typing...

Warner

>
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