[TUHS] The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Dan Cross]

On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 5:24 PM Douglas McIlroy
<douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>
> > 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.

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.