Legality Status of Thomas Roell's X11R4 server

[James Van Artsdalen]

In <5953 at tuminfo1.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de>,
	roell at informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Thomas Roell) wrote:

> Most thought that this would be illegal, but the only way. [...]  A
> ldterm driver without a STREAMS package would make no sence. So all I
> was about to do was to give away simply a bugfix.

In the eyes of the law, even Robin Hood is a thief because he stole,
whatever his intentions to do good.

> Ok, this is my very LAST PD PROJECT. There will be just one new
> release including the XView 2.0 toolkit. Thenafter I'll write software
> only for cash.

I'm not sure I understand the logic to this.  Writing for profit vs.
free has little to do with being caught with stolen source.  What is
it that makes no longer wish to work on free software?  The
consequences of using AT&T source in a commercial product are
considerably greater than PD software I imagine.

> But there is a last question I have for you: As I read in the annoucement of
> your product, you used GCC and GDB for developing this.
> 
> 	You used FREE SOFTWARE !!!!!!
> 
> Didn't you read the GNU copyleft ? Why couldn't you just accept that I'm a
> idealist ?

The difference is that Friedel is allowed to use gcc and gdb by FSF,
whereas AT&T never authorized you to use their source.  This is not a
terribly subtle distinction.

I confess that I was disappointed to learn that your server was
tainted by illegal source access.  It seems almost gratuitous:
virtually none of your work in the X server could use material derived
from AT&T source.  Why throw the entire issue into doubt over ldterm?
The server would have been a very good piece of work even without the
AT&T sources & ldterm change.
-- 
James R. Van Artsdalen          james at bigtex.cactus.org   "Live Free or Die"
Dell Computer Co    9505 Arboretum Blvd Austin TX 78759         512-338-8789