yacc: public domain?

[Henry Spencer]

>   (1) AT&T has traditionally used trade secret law to protect UNIX.  All
>	UNIX licenses include a requirement that anyone given access to
>	the source of UNIX sign a nondisclosure agreement.

I don't recall the exact wording, but I'll be very surprised if it makes
any distinction between source and binary for non-disclosure purposes.
Every byte of software supplied by Bell is covered, source or not.

>     (3) Since /usr/lib/yaccpar is not copyrighted and is not patented, AT&T's
> 	only legal protection is trade secret law.  But the most basic
> 	element of that law is that the information must be kept *secret* by
> 	restrictions and contractual agreements.  Over the years, thousands of
> 	unprivileged users have been given unrestricted access to /usr/include
> 	and all other cat-able files.  So where is the secret?

Anyone who has granted access to this stuff without imposing a non-disclosure
requirement as a condition of access is in violation of their Unix licence,
and AT&T could sue them for their shirts over it.

> Thus, AT&T would seem to have no legal recourse against people who use
> publicly-readable files.  

Bell-supplied software is not supposed to be made publicly-readable, in
the broad sense of the word "public".

> In fact, trade secret law doesn't prohibit reverse engineering, either.  I
> have seen a lot of recent contracts that explicitly prohibit disassembling the
> code involved.  Since at least the older AT&T contracts do not cover this
> possibility, it is probably also legal to disassemble any binary that has
> world read permissions unless you are covered by a more recent contract.

Certainly it is legal to disassemble it, but that is Bell code you are
disassembling, and it is covered by non-disclosure.  My understanding is
that binary-only licences still have a non-disclosure clause.  Giving
people only the binaries is an enforcement tactic, making it harder to
steal things inconspicuously; it does not change the nature of the
legal protection.

Catting things == accessing them.  Ability to access Bell-supplied stuff
without being covered, somehow, by non-disclosure provisions => licence
violation somewhere.  It's as simple as that.  *ALL* Unix licences include
non-disclosure clauses; *ALL* Bell-supplied software -- sources, binaries,
libraries, EVERYTHING -- is covered by those non-disclosure clauses.  No
way is any of this stuff in the public domain, legally.

Whether it is in the public domain in practice is another story.  Quite
possibly one could argue that illicit access to Unix materials, including
sources, is so common that AT&T cannot realistically claim that the
stuff is secret any more.  The problem is, AT&T would fight such a
contention tooth and nail, and being right is not comforting when you
are facing a legal battle of that magnitude and expense.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry