[TUHS] The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu>]

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> There was lawyerly concern about the code being stolen.

Not always misplaced. There was a guy in Boston who sold Unix look-alike
programs. A quick look at the binary revealed perfect correlation with our
C source. Coincidentally, DEC had hired this person as a consultant in
connection with cross-licensing negotiations with AT&T. Socializing at
the end of a day's negotiations,  our lawyer somehow managed to turn the
conversation to software piracy. He discussed  a case he was working on,
and happened to have some documents about it in his briefcase. He pulled
out a page disassembled binary and a page of source code and showed them to
the consultant.

After a little study, the consultant confidently opined that the binary was
obviously compiled from that source. "Would it surprise you," the lawyer
asked, "if I told you that this is yours and that is ours?" The consultant
did not attend the following day's meeting.

Doug

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