Are any parts of UNIX in public domain?

[Rex Ballard]

In article <197 at gilbbs.UUCP> mc68020 at gilbbs.UUCP (Tom Keller) writes:
>In article <142 at myab.UUCP>, lars at myab.UUCP (lars) writes:
>> >
>> >In the context of this whole discussion about previous lack of copyright
>> >notices, it is interesting to note that EVERY piece of source code in the
>> >System V Release 2.1 source code option for the 3B2 has the following notice
>> >at the front of the file:
>> >
>> >/*	Copyright (c) 1984 AT&T	*/
>> >/*	  All Rights Reserved  	*/

Isn't this all they need to protect themselves?
An even better approach would be:
	static char *copyright="Copyright 1984 AT&T, All Rights Reserved";
In the top line of the program, Which would protect the binary as well.
By the way, this article, because it has this notice, could be considered
property of AT&T :-).
>> >
>> >/*	THIS IS UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE OF AT&T	*/

What purpose does this serve?  Does this give them protections
under some sort of "Trade Secrets Act"?  Does this prevent me from
reading the source, then passing it on to someone else, without making
a copy?

>> >/*	The copyright notice above does not evidence any   	*/
>> >/*	actual or intended publication of such source code.	*/

The fact that many people have copies means they have "published" the
code.  I suppose this simply prevents one customer from buying it, then
selling or trading it to someone else (who might need a lot of hand holding).
Under the copyright laws the first costumer is allowed to do this, so long as
they don't keep any copies for themselves.

>> It is interesting to notice that the previously very small (and fast)
>> shell procedure /bin/true now has a size of 747 bytes and a doubled
>> execution time.
>
>   This may be so, but I hardly think it can be attributed to the addition of
>copyright notices.  All comments are ignored by the compiler, so there could
>be literally megabytes of comments related to copyright without affecting the
>size of the binary by even one byte.  I would suggest that you look for other
>explanations (maybe AT&T implemented /bin/true in interpretive BASIC? :-) )
>

It depends, /bin/true could be a shell script (it is on most machines),
in which case, the copyright notice is "interpreted" along with the
actual body of the script.  Also, if the copyright notice were imbedded
in the binary, as suggested earlier, the binary would a little bigger.