Trade Secrets and Ripping of ATT

[Ron Natalie]

It's amazing how out of hand this gets.  This all started because
someone wanted to know whether the output of YACC contains proprietary
code in it.  Chances are that by Trade Secret law the answer is no.
If you don't use the provided parser, the answer is certainly no.
Verdict:  If you're worried use your own parser or one provided for
the public domain by the Software Tools group.

Just because some aspect of UNIX isn't secret anymore doesn't give you
the right to steal the source and use it.  Perhaps the operation of UNIX
isn't secret anymore.  The manuals are available anywhere and AT&T does
not discourage people from talking about it (some vendors like UNIVAC
require people to be bound by the proprietary agreements at conferences).
AT&T doesn't seem to be interested in challenging this.  IDRIS, COHERENT,
etc... are examples of people who use the public knowledge of what UNIX
does to make their own compatilbe product.  The source code (how it does
it) is a different matter however.  AT&T still enforces secrecy agreements
on the source code and descriptions on how the source code operates.

-Ron