* [TUHS] Re: Sad news from IBM...
@ 2005-06-09 5:07 James Falknor
2005-06-09 5:30 ` Peter Jeremy
0 siblings, 1 reply; 2+ messages in thread
From: James Falknor @ 2005-06-09 5:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
>
>
>I was reading Groklaw yesterday night when I came across this. It is a
>very sad thought to know that possibly tons of old/ancient code is being
>dumped in the trash bin.
>
>More so now since the advent of software patents: it may become very
>difficult to avoid a patent on a re-invention of the wheel if previous
>knowledge has been dumped.
>
>OK, the quote. It is from "the Todd Shaughnessy affidavit [PDF] from IBM
>that Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells requested they file when they turned
>over all the code and paperwork to SCO":
>
> 28. As I have noted above, IBM does not maintain revision control
> information for AIX source code pre-dating 1991. To the extent that
> any code for the AIX operating system (that did not duplicate the
> code already being produced in CMVC) was found during the search
> described in Paragraph 26-27 above, it was produced. Paragraphs
> 29-31 below describe additional search efforts IBM undertook to
> locate pre-1991 versions of AIX code. No versions of AIX pre-dating
> 1991 were found.
>
> 29. In the 1980s and early 1990s, IBM prepared vital records backups
> of AIX source code and transferred them to a remote storage location.
> At some point in the 1990s, the AIX vital records tapes were transferred
> to Austin, Texas. In late 2000, the tapes were determined to be obsolete,
> and were not retained.
>
> 30. The AIX development organization contacted other IBM employees who
> were known or believed to have been involved with the development or
> product release of AIX versions prior to 1991. In addition, IBM
> managers and attorneys asked current members of the AIX development
> organization whether they were aware of the location of pre-1991
> releases of AIX source code. No one asked was aware of any remaining
> copies of pre-1991 AIX source code.
>
>Perhaps we should do something to raise awareness about the relevance of
>legacy (not only UNIX) source code. And in any case, it is a pity that all
>that historical information had been lost forever.
>
>I have always complained about this, and consider it the biggest drawback of
>closed proprietary source code: it is OK that law protects developer interests
>with the goal of promoting innovation and the public benefit at large. But it
>is a lose for everybody whenever any such "protected" code is dumped into the
>bin banning anyone else from further benefitting from or exploiting it, and
>opening the road for opportunists to claim they "newly invented" it.
>
>Sic. Sigh.
> j
>
All may not be lost.
As it appears to me, TUHS has connections with Universities / Colleges
and other types schools, as well as programmers, software engineers and
the like.
All we need to do is put the word out that TUHS is seeking pre-1991 AIX
source code and it's bound to surface. If all else fails, I'm sure
someone has a pre-1991 AIX binary distribution that could be
disassembled (that is if a binary distribution can be disassembled back
to a rough source code).
To all TUHS members,
As a part of the heritage of Unix, please search any and all your
archives for pre-1991 AIX Source Code. Maybe, just maybe, a pre-1991 AIX
Binary Distribution will suffice. Help IBM, TUHS, and in the end, the
heritage of Unix.
Thank you,
James Falknor
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* [TUHS] Re: Sad news from IBM...
2005-06-09 5:07 [TUHS] Re: Sad news from IBM James Falknor
@ 2005-06-09 5:30 ` Peter Jeremy
0 siblings, 0 replies; 2+ messages in thread
From: Peter Jeremy @ 2005-06-09 5:30 UTC (permalink / raw)
On 2005-Jun-08 23:07:34 -0600, James Falknor <james at peacemax.org> wrote:
>All we need to do is put the word out that TUHS is seeking pre-1991 AIX
>source code and it's bound to surface.
It depends how widely spread the source code was and how may people
still have readable 15 year old backups. I know I tend to delete old
code after a while and many of my old QIC-150 tapes are no longer
readable.
> If all else fails, I'm sure
>someone has a pre-1991 AIX binary distribution that could be
>disassembled (that is if a binary distribution can be disassembled back
>to a rough source code).
I'd be very surprised if this produces anything useful. The code will
have been compiled with a reasonable degree of optimisation and won't
have any debugging symbols in it. It would be reasonably trivial to
turn it into something that a C compiler could understand but making
it look anything like the original is a major undertaking.
--
Peter Jeremy
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2005-06-09 5:30 ` Peter Jeremy
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