Legality Status of Thomas Roell's X11R4 server

[Piercarlo Grandi]

On 9 Dec 90 11:40:30 GMT, james at bigtex.cactus.org (James Van Artsdalen) said:

In article <50931 at bigtex.cactus.org> james at bigtex.cactus.org (James Van
In article <50931 at bigtex.cactus.org> Artsdalen) writes:

james> In <5953 at tuminfo1.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de>,
james> 	roell at informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Thomas Roell) wrote:

james> The consequences of using AT&T source in a commercial product are
james> considerably greater than PD software I imagine.

>From what I understand Thomas Roell did not after all include AT&T
source in a PD product. He included a bug fix for AT&T source, a bug fix
that can only be used by people who have AT&T source. It is my guess
that Thomas Roell can legally access AT&T source to derive the bug fix,
as with all probability his University is an AT&T source licensee.

A number of free sw packages distributed by Universities and other
entities that are AT&T source licensees come with patches to AT&T
licensed source (Ingres 7 for example used to require a patch to the
exit(2) implementation for the lock driver), and since the amount of
AT&T licensed source is small, they have no reason to claim that their
copyright or trade secret has been violated.

I am a bit perplexed by the idea that he could have posted the ldterm
source in its entirety, as an act of protest an defiance, but thank
goodness he did not, and thought better. But this aborted intention is
about the only thing that IMNHO he can be accused of.

Morever the ldterm(4) patch mentioned has been *posted* on this net some
months ago by somebody else, if memory serves me well.

james> The difference is that Friedel is allowed to use gcc and gdb by
james> FSF, whereas AT&T never authorized you to use their source.  This
james> is not a terribly subtle distinction.  [ ... ] I confess that I
james> was disappointed to learn that your server was tainted by illegal
james> source access.

First it must be shown that Thomas Roell is not covered by an AT&T
license or that posting a small excerpt is a violation of that license
or of the copyright.

IMNHO it is perfectly correct in law and established practice to make
public bug fixes to AT&T licensed source code, whether they are headers
or actual program code.
--
Piercarlo Grandi                   | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs at nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth        | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg at cs.aber.ac.uk