[TUHS] The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[TUHS] The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Douglas McIlroy]

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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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[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 05:23:44PM -0400, Douglas McIlroy wrote:
> > 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.

Oh come on, you can leave that juicy story there.  What happened next?
-- 
---
Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Dave Horsfall]

On Fri, 15 Mar 2024, Douglas McIlroy wrote:

[...]

> 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.

Does anyone remember the case of the program that was literally 
bug-compatible?  That's mostly because the source had been pirated; the 
bug was obscure enough that it was unlikely to have been reproduced 
independently...

-- Dave

[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Marc Rochkind]

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"...  literally bug-compatible ..."

When I used to work for the phone company.... wait, I mean Bell Labs ... I
was in a department (under Rudd Canaday!) that was building an application
to print phone books, so I got to learn a little about that side of the
business. The Bells would deliberately put in bogus listings to see if the
non-Bell phone books were stealing their data. (In the one case I was told
about, they were not. The Bell company had no idea how they were getting
the data.)

Marc

On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 4:28 PM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:

> On Fri, 15 Mar 2024, Douglas McIlroy wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > 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.
>
> Does anyone remember the case of the program that was literally
> bug-compatible?  That's mostly because the source had been pirated; the
> bug was obscure enough that it was unlikely to have been reproduced
> independently...
>
> -- Dave
>


-- 
*My new email address is mrochkind@gmail.com <mrochkind@gmail.com>*

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[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Rich Salz]

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>
>
> . The Bells would deliberately put in bogus listings to see if the
> non-Bell phone books were stealing their data.
>

This was common practice among map publishers, called a trap street.

>

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[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Dave Horsfall]

[ Slowly going OT ]

On Sat, 16 Mar 2024, Rich Salz wrote:

> This was common practice among map publishers, called a trap street.

Yep; I've seen one myself.  A dead-end (where someone I knew lived, just 
right behind where I used to), suddenly vanished from one edition; one 
complaint later, and it reappeared in the next edition.

-- Dave

[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Dan Cross]

On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 5:24 PM Douglas McIlroy
<douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>
> > 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.

Fantastic story, and talk about a true "Perry Mason" moment for the
lawyer. I'm sure it was also fertile material for stories at cocktail
parties for the rest of his days.

        - Dan C.

[TUHS] Re: The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Douglas McIlroy]

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Yes. The lawyer was walking on air when he got back to the office to tell
about it.

If I may digress into a personal story, somewhat pre-Unix. (I was nine
years old.)  I remember my father showing exactly the same excitement when
he returned from testifying as an expert witness for the plaintiff in a
near-electrocution case that left the victim paralyzed. A visitor touring a
substation had pointed to something to ask what it was, and got hit with a
33,000-volt arc. The defense lawyer tried to discredit the expert, a
professor who formerly had been an electrical engineer for a utility
company.

Lawyer: Have you ever designed a 33,000-volt indoor substation?
Prof: I have.
Lawyer, changing tactics after an unexpected answer: Do you recognize this
book?
Prof: I do.
Some discussion describing the book, an  inventory of utility facilities,
for the benefit of the jury.
Lawyer, with a hint of triumph: The inventory shows that your former
employer has no such substation.
Prof: Yes, after a few years we decided it was too dangerous and
decommissioned it.
...
Lawyer, showing a photo of the busbar that arced: Wouldn't someone have to
stretch unusually high to get near to it?
Prof: No. That picture was taken exactly [some measurement like 2'3"] from
the floor.
Lawyer: Do you mean to tell me you know where the picture was taken from,
without having been present when it was taken?
Prof, pointing to a blown-up engineering drawing on the courtroom wall:
This horizontal pipe is seen end-on in the photo. It  is dimensioned as
being 2'3" from the floor.

The plaintiff won.

Doug

On Mon, Mar 18, 2024 at 8:28 AM Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 5:24 PM Douglas McIlroy
> <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> >
> > > 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.
>
> Fantastic story, and talk about a true "Perry Mason" moment for the
> lawyer. I'm sure it was also fertile material for stories at cocktail
> parties for the rest of his days.
>
>         - Dan C.
>

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[TUHS] The Mark Williams Company and Coherent

[Marc Rochkind]

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In another thread there's been some discussion of Coherent. I just came
across this very detailed history, just posted last month. There's much
more to it than I knew.

https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-mark-williams-company

Marc

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