Where"s the (c) on UNIX?

[Steve Zimmerman]

I think it is important for me to respond to Jophn Haller's article that
referred to CCA EMACS, especially as I was referred to by name in that
article.  The article may have left the mistaken impression that CCA
EMACS still contains some of Warren Montgomery's code, which is not the
case.

Up until the fall of 1982, CCA EMACS was distributed free of charge to a
limited number of sites.  This version of CCA EMACS did contain a
limited amount of Montgomery's code.  For various reasons, including its
wide unrestriced distribution to dozens of sites (not by Montgomery, I
should add), CCA believed that this code was in the public domain.
Prior to the release of CCA EMACS as a commercial product, we felt that
we should verify that Bell Labs agreed with us about the status of this
code, and so we asked them.  Their reply after investigating the matter
was that the code was Bell Labs proprietary, and they requested us and
all users of either CCA EMACS or Montgomery's EMACS outside Bell Labs
(where its use is quite legal) to destroy this code immediately.  Rather
than to argue with Bell Labs, we felt that the simplest course of action
was to accede to their request.  Since at this point there was very
little of Montgomery's code left in CCA EMACS, it was a straightforward
matter to remove that code and rewrite from scratch all the affected
routines.  When this was done, we assured Bell Labs that none of
Montgomery's code was left in CCA EMACS, and they replied to us that
they accepted our assurance.  All this happened before the first
commercial release of CCA EMACS last May, and no problems concerning
this issue have arisen since then.

It is important to note that Bell Labs did not force CCA to take any
actions, as John Haller claimed; at no point were communications between
Bell Labs and CCA at all unfriendly.

	Steve Zimmerman
	Computer Corporation of America