Mach without ATT code? <was: OS costs>

[Ray Shwake]

david at twg.com (David S. Herron) writes:

>CMU's plan is to do whatever they can to free it from the little snippets
>of AT&T and Berkeley code that are left.
>It's quite doable, just takes some effort and time is all.

Would not such an effort require that the developers work in "clean room"
conditions? Recall that development of legitimate VGA and PC BIOS that
would stand the legal test required that that those engaged in the effort
work from nothing but specifications.

In this case, developers might work from nothing more than POSIX, SVID or 
X/Open specifications. But how many top-notch programmers interested in
such an effort have had no exposure to AT&T/BSD source code?