unix & at&t

[Ron Natalie]

The fact that this author encloses all his messages in comment characters
and uses a terminal without a shift key should tell me something...

> this is not to condone wholesale piracy. at&t deserves to make some
> bucks off rich corporations, but not private hackers.

Why do you think it's unfair for AT&T to avoid making a distinction
between Joe-Private-Enterprise and Joe-Private-Computer-Geek?  The
educational license serves AT&T one and only one purpose, and it's
the same ploy that IBM used in the past.  To get people at Universities
trained in it so that when they graduate they'll be in the market to
by UNICES.  Joe-Private-Computer-Geek provides no benefit to AT&T.
AT&T is not, and should not be a social assistance program to hackers.

>  most theaters prohibit taping concerts
> because of so-called piracy, probably because of a standard clause
> in the record companies or agents contracts. but i want a tape of the
> concert i went to. if the record companies would record it i would
> buy it. so let me tape it. the people who attempt to sell it for
> lotsa bucks will become too visible and be hassled by lawyers, but
> what's wrong with private use.

It's not to make the record companies rich, it's to keep the composers,
etc..from getting ripped off.

> at&t could publish the sources, collect any
> interesting user contributed software, sell the result, make a killing,
> and probably eliminate many standard os's out of lack of interest.

IBM does this now, but they still charge you for the sources.  As a matter
of fact, IBM's community (as well as the UNIX community) has to continually
battle to keep the sources available at any price.

> has anyone considered the fact that the arpanet is widely used for
> mail (ripping the post office off) and technical papers (ripping off
> the publishing companies)?

It never ceases to amaze me that people keep making analogies that have
no relevance to the origninal topic.  Having the net in competition with
other carriers (USPS) or companies (publishing companies) is different
than stealing someone else product and not paying for it.  A better
analogy would be mailing a letter without using a valid stamp or xeroxing
technical papers out of magazines rather than subscribing to them.

> fortunately, i'm in a position where access (to sources) means
> that i wont have to test my morality. my uncle (sam) has graciously
> procured V6, sys V, and 4.2BSD. just the same, i plan to port
> anything i find useful from one system to another (it's already
> been paid for, right?). i dont know what i'd do if i was one of those
> poor suckers who lived in binary land.

Wrong.  If you are using an OEM sublicense, you are still violating the
law.  You are only allowed to run the AT&T code that the OEM supplied you.
If you have bought a real System V binary license, you can then cross
compile code to your machine, but you may not move the source to the machine
with the binary license.  To do that you need either a source license or
an "Additional CPU" endorsement on a source license.  BRL, for instance,
keeps the AT&T source only on VGR, and all our other machines have binary
licenses and recieve binary distibutions.

-Ron