[9fans] Plan 9 technical docs and man pages - licensed or "public domain"?

[Andy Elvey <andy.elvey@paradise.net.nz>]

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Hi everyone - I'm a first-timer here -

   I'm thinking of doing a "public domain" implementation (in C) of 9P.
I've seen the large listing (on the cat-v site) of existing 9P
implementations which are under various licenses, and so in thinking
about where those people obtained the required information from, the
following questions came to mind -

a) The information *must* have been obtained from the Plan 9 technical
docs (specification papers) or the Plan 9 man pages. Can the information
in either of these be regarded as being "public domain"?  (It would seem
to be, given the number of different licenses of the various
implementations. They could surely not have taken LPL-licensed code and
then converted it to GPL, BSD, MIT......?

It would seem that the proliferation of licenses could only be done if
the original source of the information was "public domain". )

b) If the answer to (a) is "yes" - does that include the source-code
shown in those papers (and the man pages)?

I've seen the "public domain" implementation of 9P in Python (by Tim
Newsham), so I assume he got the required information from the places
I've mentioned.

Thanks for your time - looking forward to your replies.
- Andy


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