[TUHS] History of cal(1)?

[Clem Cole via TUHS]

On Thu, Sep 25, 2025 at 11:09 AM Ron Natalie via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:

> I don’t disagree, but software copyright is almost as old as software.
> The earliest use was back in 1961, long before UNIX or its predecessors
> existed.
> Its nonexistance was not the reason Western Electric didn’t use it.
>
> But AT&T >>did<< use a copyright on the sources, as I previously sent a
screenful of output from:

cd <Fifth Edition Source Directory>; find . -type f -print | xargs grep -i
Copyright | more

and the >>copyright<< was all we were worried about at the time.  You
can do that with any directory that contains source from AT&T and I bet
you'll find them.  They freely put copyright in everything.  Even early
UNIX itself prints a banner when you log in, stating that Western Electric
holds the copyright on the product you are using.

As I mentioned earlier, CMU did not require us to sign an *NDA*.  What they
asked us to sign was a CMU document that stated we understood this material
was licensed to the University, had an AT&T copyright, and we could not
distribute it to anyone, without permission [at the time, the "permission
gatekeeper was Howard Wakler of the CS Dept, who was responsible for all
the systems, the licenses, et al]

My memory is that >>before<< that, if CS or the Computer Center (IBM shop)
hired you, we had to sign something that said we understood we were
representing the University and we would not put any licenses at risk, and
that was kept in our employee file.   My >>guess< is that what we had to
sign for the OS course was a child of that thinking.  But I never asked him
and have never known if it was Howard's idea to have us sign the
agreement.   My bet is he was part of it.  That was the first OS class that
did not use a "toy OS,"  but rather the 6th Edition of Unix.  My >>guess< is
that the Prof (Anita Jones), who was teaching the OS course, asked Howard
for access to the sources for the students, and Howard likely said - Well,
it's licensed to CMU and has an AT&T copyright on it.  We need to ensure
that they follow the rules for handling licensed IP.

The point is that, as far as I know/can remember, the AT&T UNIX licensees
for whom I worked (CMU, Tektronix, etc) never considered the UNIX IP as a
trade secret.  We did treat it as material with a copyright.  I also have
no recollection of ever hearing anyone at a USENIX talk discuss the "trade
secret" aspect of any AT&T license, nor do I remember it coming up in what
AT&T negotiated with us on the commercial side, specifically regarding a
redistribution license (*i.e*., what would create the System III license).
We did argue about where and how the sources could be stored at these
sites.  IIRC, both the research and commercial use licenses required you to
name the CPU model and serial number. For commercial folks, you paid a CPU
license to have the IP on it.

Simply put, we were worried about infringing on AT&T's copyright and core
"UNIX usage" license.
Clem