1003.2 Command Groups (Really UUCP protocol)

[std-unix at ut-sally.UUCP]

In article <7037 at ut-sally.UUCP> rick at seismo.css.gov (Rick Adams) writes:
>Lack of documention of the uucp protocols should not be enough to
>keep it out of the standard.
>
>I could document all of the necessary uucp protocols, file formats, etc
>WITHOUT violating ATT trade secrets or looking at the source.
>(The debugging output, a line monitor and cating the files in the spool
>directory provide all of the information necessary)
>
>Documenting the 't' and 'f' protocols is trivial because it's not att
>code.
>
>However, documenting the 'g' protocol would be a royal bitch without looking
>at the source code.

Maybe I'm missing something here. What is wrong with the following scenario:

1) Rick Adams (or someone else) documents all the protocols, even if he has
   to look at the source.
2) He publishes said protocol definitions, without publishing a single line of
   source.
3) Rick does NOT write any new code to implement the protocols.
4) I (or someone else) take Rick's publication and using just that document,
   write brand new code to implement the protocol.

In other words, what is wrong with person A reading the code and publishing
just the protocol, person B using JUST the protocol to write code, and person A
not writing any code? After all, it seems everyone agrees that the protocols
themselves are not copyrighted by AT&T, just the code that implements them.
-- 
Arnold Robbins
CSNET:	arnold at emory	BITNET:	arnold at emoryu1
ARPA:	arnold%emory.csnet at csnet-relay.arpa
UUCP:	{ akgua, decvax, gatech, sb1, sb6, sunatl }!emory!arnold

Volume-Number: Volume 9, Number 45