O'pain Software Foundation: (2) Why is it better than AT&T?

[Eduardo Krell]

In article <503 at bacchus.DEC.COM> price at decwrl.UUCP (Chuck Price) writes:

(about SVR3)

>Anything
>you add becomes the property of AT&T, ...

I've read a lot of nonsense in this discussion, but this is clearly
untrue.  I have a Counterpoint Workstation on my desk running their
port of SVR3 to their multiprocessor architecture, and their additions
are clearly Counterpoint proprietary source code. In fact, we had to
sign a non-disclosure agreement with them before they let us have source.

Now, if their code became the property of AT&T by some magic act,
why did we have to sign such an agreement  (after all, it's our code now,
isn't it).

>Question: If AT&T is so committed to open systems, why doesn't
>it join OSF?

Because AT&T owns Unix and doesn't want to give it away (especially to
those who have always benefited from closed/proprietary systems)
and because committee don't design good operating systems/programming
languages/whatever.
    
    Eduardo Krell                   AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ

    UUCP: {ihnp4,ucbvax}!ulysses!ekrell		ARPA: ekrell at ulysses.att.com