[TUHS] copyright, was History of cal(1) ?

[John R Levine via TUHS]

On Sun, 21 Sep 2025, ron minnich wrote:
> I am intrigued by the meaning of the name Resistors …

Keeping in mind it was the 1960s, it was nominally "Radically Emphatic 
Students Interested in Science, Technology, and Other Research Studies" 
but we were teen-agers and it was, you know, the 1960s.

We have a web site with some historical stuff here:

https://www.resistors.org/

R's,
John

> On Sun, Sep 21, 2025 at 14:24 John Levine via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi, old R.E.S.I.S.T.O.R.S. member here.
>>
>> It appears that Douglas McIlroy via TUHS <douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu>
>> said:
>>> Prior to Unix, Calvin Mooers had spooked AT&T about software
>>> copyrights. Mooers obtained the copyright for a 1966 CACM article
>>> about his TRAC language and sued Western Electric, claiming that
>>> Claude Kagan's implementation of TRAC based on the article infringed
>>> the copyright.  ...
>>
>>> so appalling that they settled. The only publicly visible outcome was
>>> that Kagan changed the name of his implementation to Sam67.
>>
>> No surprise about the name change since Cal had a trademark on the name
>> TRAC.
>> Beyond that, Claude also changed the syntax a little so it looked more like
>> Strachey's GPM and less like Trac. Trac was unlike other macrogenerators
>> in that
>> it cleanly separated I/O from macro expansion, and Sam76 still did it like
>> Trac
>> did, but that would have been a patent issue and this was before software
>> patents.
>>
>> The whole episode was extremely strange. Cal had known Claude and the
>> RESISTORS
>> for years. Peter Eichenberger and I wrote our own Trac processors for the
>> PDP-10
>> and PDP-11, independent of Claude's PDP-8 version. Cal had known about all
>> of
>> this before he sued. I cannot tell whether he wanted money or credit or
>> what,
>> but we had no hint that he was planning to sue or objected to anything we
>> were
>> doing.  He never said anything to Peter or me.
>>
>> Later in the 1980s I lived around the corner from Cal in Harvard Square
>> but unfortunately never got around to reintroducing myself.
>>
>> R's,
>> John
>>
>

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at taugh.com, Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
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