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* [TUHS] Early BSD license thread
@ 2022-09-21 10:10 Warner Losh
  2022-09-21 12:36 ` [TUHS] " Rob Pike
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread
From: Warner Losh @ 2022-09-21 10:10 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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I hate myself a little bit, but I posted an answer to the 'BSD license
origin' in this twitter thread
https://twitter.com/bsdimp/status/1572521676268802049
that people might find interesting.

Please note the caveats at the end of the thread: This is a bare outline
hitting the high points taking only data from release files with no behind
the scenes confirmation about why things changed, nor in-depth exploration
of variations that I know are present, nor do I got into examples from
various USENET postings from the time that stole the license for people's
own different uses.

Nonetheless, I hope it's useful...

Warner

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* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 10:10 [TUHS] Early BSD license thread Warner Losh
@ 2022-09-21 12:36 ` Rob Pike
  2022-09-21 13:33   ` Marc Donner
                     ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 25+ messages in thread
From: Rob Pike @ 2022-09-21 12:36 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Warner Losh; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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It was a long time ago but it rankled at the time (and even came up in my
Bell Labs interview): that copyright notice replaced whatever was there
before. Code written and copyrighted by other institutions was absorbed
into the Berkeley distribution and reattributed without credit. Joy told me
later that the lawyers made them do it. He was probably telling the truth,
but that didn't make it OK.

-rob


On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 8:12 PM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:

> I hate myself a little bit, but I posted an answer to the 'BSD license
> origin' in this twitter thread
> https://twitter.com/bsdimp/status/1572521676268802049
> that people might find interesting.
>
> Please note the caveats at the end of the thread: This is a bare outline
> hitting the high points taking only data from release files with no behind
> the scenes confirmation about why things changed, nor in-depth exploration
> of variations that I know are present, nor do I got into examples from
> various USENET postings from the time that stole the license for people's
> own different uses.
>
> Nonetheless, I hope it's useful...
>
> Warner
>

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* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 12:36 ` [TUHS] " Rob Pike
@ 2022-09-21 13:33   ` Marc Donner
  2022-09-21 13:46   ` Warner Losh
  2022-09-21 21:49   ` [TUHS] " Phil Budne
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread
From: Marc Donner @ 2022-09-21 13:33 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Rob Pike; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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The missing piece is some sort of framework for fractional, partial,
composite, or shared ownership.  The performing arts folks have a notion of
this, but it is pretty specialized.

Our notion of ownership is all or nothing, strictly binary.

Publishing has notions of dividing rights regionally and by medium ("movie
rights" is a recognized term) but not really a composite view.

Movies have some stuff, but every movie is represented by its own
ton-of-paper contract.  No real general ideas.

http://nygeek.net/2010/01/02/whose-data-are-these-anyway-2/

On Wed, Sep 21, 2022, 08:37 Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:

> It was a long time ago but it rankled at the time (and even came up in my
> Bell Labs interview): that copyright notice replaced whatever was there
> before. Code written and copyrighted by other institutions was absorbed
> into the Berkeley distribution and reattributed without credit. Joy told me
> later that the lawyers made them do it. He was probably telling the truth,
> but that didn't make it OK.
>
> -rob
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 8:12 PM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>
>> I hate myself a little bit, but I posted an answer to the 'BSD license
>> origin' in this twitter thread
>> https://twitter.com/bsdimp/status/1572521676268802049
>> that people might find interesting.
>>
>> Please note the caveats at the end of the thread: This is a bare outline
>> hitting the high points taking only data from release files with no behind
>> the scenes confirmation about why things changed, nor in-depth exploration
>> of variations that I know are present, nor do I got into examples from
>> various USENET postings from the time that stole the license for people's
>> own different uses.
>>
>> Nonetheless, I hope it's useful...
>>
>> Warner
>>
>

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* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 12:36 ` [TUHS] " Rob Pike
  2022-09-21 13:33   ` Marc Donner
@ 2022-09-21 13:46   ` Warner Losh
  2022-09-21 14:50     ` Rich Salz
  2022-09-21 14:57     ` [TUHS] Fwd: " Clem Cole
  2022-09-21 21:49   ` [TUHS] " Phil Budne
  2 siblings, 2 replies; 25+ messages in thread
From: Warner Losh @ 2022-09-21 13:46 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Rob Pike; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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It's unclear, but possible. In 2BSD, 3BSD and 4BSD, there aren't very many
copyrights,
but they are all Regents copyrights on pascal, assembler, termlib and some
plotting
software. Well, there appeared to be two Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc
copyright
in lex.c and sed.c. The vast majority of files had no copyright attached to
them at all,
even ones that were little changed from 32V or 7th edition.

Same was true for 4.1BSD.

4.2BSD had rcs which was Copyright Walter F. Tichy and Ken Harrenstien, SRI
International (mostly the former). fp which was Copyright Scott B. Baden,
indent
which was copyright  Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.
sccstorcs
copyright Kenneth L. Greer. and cpm which was copyright by Helge
Skrivervik, UCB.
and was one of the few files to have a permissions grant "Permission
granted for
use by UNIX* licencees." though many of these were for manual pages. And
sccstorcs
did have the permission
 * All rights reserved. No part of this software may be sold or distributed
 * in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the
 * author.
on it, through several releases (though it was removed before 4.3BSD-Reno).

4.3BSD added a bunch more copyrights of various people:

Digital Equipment Corporation
Tektronix Inc
Advanced Computer Communications

and likely others.

Starting in 4.3BSD-Tahoe we see lots of
 * This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by
 * Excelan Inc.
which have Regent copyrights, and sometimes the original contributor
copyright.
This was the time that we started also seeing the BSD license is a proto
form. This
continues in 4.3BSD-Reno to a greater degree.

4.4BSD continues this to a ridiculous degree.

So, maybe it did happen, but I find no extant evidence of a copyright being
removed and replaced by Berkeley. If anything, once files started being
marked
with a copyright notice, they seem to be retained over several releases and
on the 2BSD series where the code was merged into.

Now, it's not clear if all the code contributed by folks executed paperwork
assigning
the copyright to the Regents or not. But it looks like in many cases credit
was
given, at least in the time period starting with 2BSD. 1BSD lacks the word
'copyright'
but kirk's archive has all the files in .a archives which are grepable. It
didn't
include any AT&T code.

Warner


On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 6:36 AM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:

> It was a long time ago but it rankled at the time (and even came up in my
> Bell Labs interview): that copyright notice replaced whatever was there
> before. Code written and copyrighted by other institutions was absorbed
> into the Berkeley distribution and reattributed without credit. Joy told me
> later that the lawyers made them do it. He was probably telling the truth,
> but that didn't make it OK.
>
> -rob
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 8:12 PM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>
>> I hate myself a little bit, but I posted an answer to the 'BSD license
>> origin' in this twitter thread
>> https://twitter.com/bsdimp/status/1572521676268802049
>> that people might find interesting.
>>
>> Please note the caveats at the end of the thread: This is a bare outline
>> hitting the high points taking only data from release files with no behind
>> the scenes confirmation about why things changed, nor in-depth exploration
>> of variations that I know are present, nor do I got into examples from
>> various USENET postings from the time that stole the license for people's
>> own different uses.
>>
>> Nonetheless, I hope it's useful...
>>
>> Warner
>>
>

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* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 13:46   ` Warner Losh
@ 2022-09-21 14:50     ` Rich Salz
  2022-09-21 14:58       ` Warner Losh
  2022-09-21 14:57     ` [TUHS] Fwd: " Clem Cole
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread
From: Rich Salz @ 2022-09-21 14:50 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Warner Losh; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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The community used to be much more ignorant/naive about copyrights. It
wasn't until the GPL and the CSRG conversion to GCC and Gilmore's "free the
tree" efforts there that copyright was really seen as anything other than a
claim of ownership. I'd also add the Apache Foundation and their CLA
agreements. Anyone have a copy of John's handout from early Usenix
conferences? :)

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* [TUHS] Fwd: Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 13:46   ` Warner Losh
  2022-09-21 14:50     ` Rich Salz
@ 2022-09-21 14:57     ` Clem Cole
  2022-09-21 15:09       ` [TUHS] " Larry McVoy
                         ` (2 more replies)
  1 sibling, 3 replies; 25+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2022-09-21 14:57 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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below in blue ...

On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 9:47 AM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:

> ...
>
> So, maybe it did happen, but I find no extant evidence of a copyright being
> removed and replaced by Berkeley. If anything, once files started being
> marked
> with a copyright notice, they seem to be retained over several releases and
> on the 2BSD series where the code was merged into.
>
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 6:36 AM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It was a long time ago but it rankled at the time (and even came up in my
>> Bell Labs interview): that copyright notice replaced whatever was there
>> before. Code written and copyrighted by other institutions was absorbed
>> into the Berkeley distribution and reattributed without credit. Joy told me
>> later that the lawyers made them do it. He was probably telling the truth,
>> but that didn't make it OK.
>>
>> -rob
>>
> I think there are two different concepts that are getting mixed up here.
The legal term '*copyright*' and historical term of '*provenance*.'    I
agree with Warner that I know of few if any cases where copyright was not
maintained when it was in the code itself.  And as he points out, please
grep through the archives and I think that will be found to hold true.

But I also think Rob rankle comment is fair.  Joy and was noted for
recognizing cool ideas and adding them into 'Berkeley UNIX.  The line at
the time was he took ideas and '*peed on them to make them smell like
Berkeley*.' For example, 'Berkeley Joy Control' came from Kulp via Europe
and MIT, the network stack famously started at BBN, and a lot of the
support for limits and user controllers from Australia.

Yes, the CSRG team did do a great deal of innovation as well as
integration, but the line between the two was not always easy to see from
the outside.  And I think developers outside of UCB sometimes felt (to use
Rob's words) 'rankled' for CSRG getting credit for some of innovation that
really belonged to others, because the CSRG team was the distribution
vehicle.
ᐧ

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* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 14:50     ` Rich Salz
@ 2022-09-21 14:58       ` Warner Losh
  2022-09-21 15:06         ` Miod Vallat
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread
From: Warner Losh @ 2022-09-21 14:58 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Rich Salz; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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Yea, if you look at the license statements from the 80s and early 90s from
USENET and the BBS scene, you'll see
that evolution playout. If you subscribed to the 'trade rags' of the 80s,
you'd find them talking about Copyright some,
but not much about licensing, so there were a huge number of 'licenses'
that we'd laugh at today as being
totally insane / unenforceable / unclear / etc... There were also some
presentations at DECUS in the mid 80s
(and maybe earlier) on the topic as well as their distribution of tapes got
large enough...

There was also a pointer to Jeremy C Reed's
http://www.bsdnewsletter.com/2013/12/Features186.html
as well as his book on BSD history
http://www.reedmedia.net/books/bsd-history/ (which I'd love to get a copy
of).
It wasn't clear if it had been published or not from the link

I'd love to see John's handout...

Warner

On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 8:51 AM Rich Salz <rich.salz@gmail.com> wrote:

> The community used to be much more ignorant/naive about copyrights. It
> wasn't until the GPL and the CSRG conversion to GCC and Gilmore's "free the
> tree" efforts there that copyright was really seen as anything other than a
> claim of ownership. I'd also add the Apache Foundation and their CLA
> agreements. Anyone have a copy of John's handout from early Usenix
> conferences? :)
>
>

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* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 14:58       ` Warner Losh
@ 2022-09-21 15:06         ` Miod Vallat
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread
From: Miod Vallat @ 2022-09-21 15:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Warner Losh; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

> There was also a pointer to Jeremy C Reed's
> http://www.bsdnewsletter.com/2013/12/Features186.html
> as well as his book on BSD history
> http://www.reedmedia.net/books/bsd-history/ (which I'd love to get a copy
> of).
> It wasn't clear if it had been published or not from the link

It is still listed in "upcoming books" in the right column of
http://www.reedmedia.net/books/ and is still not completed AFAIK.

Miod

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Fwd: Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 14:57     ` [TUHS] Fwd: " Clem Cole
@ 2022-09-21 15:09       ` Larry McVoy
  2022-09-21 15:25       ` Warner Losh
  2022-09-21 21:14       ` [TUHS] Re: Fwd: " Theodore Ts'o
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2022-09-21 15:09 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Clem Cole; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 10:57:51AM -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
> Yes, the CSRG team did do a great deal of innovation as well as
> integration, but the line between the two was not always easy to see from
> the outside.  And I think developers outside of UCB sometimes felt (to use
> Rob's words) 'rankled' for CSRG getting credit for some of innovation that
> really belonged to others, because the CSRG team was the distribution
> vehicle.

In the valley it is well known that ideas are easy and execution is hard.
Unless you have been responsible for shipping a big product and supporting
it, it's hard to imagine how hard that is.  There is absolutely an art
to knowing when to release and when to keep fixing bugs.  I think it
was Keith Bostic who had that touch but I'm not positive.  Someone did
and having that ability is at least as important as having the ideas.
A lot less "sexy" but every bit as important.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Fwd: Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 14:57     ` [TUHS] Fwd: " Clem Cole
  2022-09-21 15:09       ` [TUHS] " Larry McVoy
@ 2022-09-21 15:25       ` Warner Losh
  2022-09-21 22:06         ` [TUHS] " Bakul Shah
  2022-09-21 21:14       ` [TUHS] Re: Fwd: " Theodore Ts'o
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread
From: Warner Losh @ 2022-09-21 15:25 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Clem Cole; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 8:59 AM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

> below in blue ...
>
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 9:47 AM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>
>> ...
>>
>> So, maybe it did happen, but I find no extant evidence of a copyright
>> being
>> removed and replaced by Berkeley. If anything, once files started being
>> marked
>> with a copyright notice, they seem to be retained over several releases
>> and
>> on the 2BSD series where the code was merged into.
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 6:36 AM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> It was a long time ago but it rankled at the time (and even came up in
>>> my Bell Labs interview): that copyright notice replaced whatever was there
>>> before. Code written and copyrighted by other institutions was absorbed
>>> into the Berkeley distribution and reattributed without credit. Joy told me
>>> later that the lawyers made them do it. He was probably telling the truth,
>>> but that didn't make it OK.
>>>
>>> -rob
>>>
>> I think there are two different concepts that are getting mixed up here.
> The legal term '*copyright*' and historical term of '*provenance*.'    I
> agree with Warner that I know of few if any cases where copyright was not
> maintained when it was in the code itself.  And as he points out, please
> grep through the archives and I think that will be found to hold true.
>
> But I also think Rob rankle comment is fair.  Joy and was noted for
> recognizing cool ideas and adding them into 'Berkeley UNIX.  The line at
> the time was he took ideas and '*peed on them to make them smell like
> Berkeley*.' For example, 'Berkeley Joy Control' came from Kulp via Europe
> and MIT, the network stack famously started at BBN, and a lot of the
> support for limits and user controllers from Australia.
>
> Yes, the CSRG team did do a great deal of innovation as well as
> integration, but the line between the two was not always easy to see from
> the outside.  And I think developers outside of UCB sometimes felt (to use
> Rob's words) 'rankled' for CSRG getting credit for some of innovation that
> really belonged to others, because the CSRG team was the distribution
> vehicle.
>

That makes a lot of sense. When there was a name, it was preserved, but a
huge amount of the sources had nothing at all in the source files to
identify it. One big area of contribution was into the kernel where the
options sometimes contained the name of where the code came from. In the
2BSD kernels we see eg TEXAS_AUTOBAUD, MENLO_OVLY, MENLO_KOV, MENLO_JCL,
MPX_FILS, CGL_RTP and a bunch of UCB_ names. It's clear the non UCB ones
came from elsewhere, but there's no info on where they came from (they are
documented in setup.5 at least so I know what they are). So given the
sparseness of the early marking for provenance, the coments make more sense
and give a better timeframe to it.

Warnerᐧ

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* [TUHS] Re: Fwd: Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 14:57     ` [TUHS] Fwd: " Clem Cole
  2022-09-21 15:09       ` [TUHS] " Larry McVoy
  2022-09-21 15:25       ` Warner Losh
@ 2022-09-21 21:14       ` Theodore Ts'o
  2022-09-21 21:46         ` Clem Cole
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread
From: Theodore Ts'o @ 2022-09-21 21:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Clem Cole; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 10:57:51AM -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
> The legal term '*copyright*' and historical term of '*provenance*.'    I
> agree with Warner that I know of few if any cases where copyright was not
> maintained when it was in the code itself.  And as he points out, please
> grep through the archives and I think that will be found to hold true.
> 
> But I also think Rob rankle comment is fair.  Joy and was noted for
> recognizing cool ideas and adding them into 'Berkeley UNIX.  The line at
> the time was he took ideas and '*peed on them to make them smell like
> Berkeley*.' For example, 'Berkeley Joy Control' came from Kulp via Europe
> and MIT, the network stack famously started at BBN, and a lot of the
> support for limits and user controllers from Australia.
> 
> Yes, the CSRG team did do a great deal of innovation as well as
> integration, but the line between the two was not always easy to see from
> the outside.

Well, there can be a huge spectrum here, isn't there?   Ranging from:

* Take the code wholesale with no changes.

* Take the code and make changes to match with local coding style.

* Take the code and serially rewrite it so when you're done it
  only vaguely resembles the original contribution.

* Look at the code, get the ideas, and the reimplement it from
  scratch, keeping the existing interface (or using the existing
  interface as a starting point before extending it)

* Look at the code, get the ideas, and reimplent it from scratch
  with radically different interfaces.

It sounds like all of these were used to some extent as part of the
BSD/CSRG integration process; is that right?

						- Ted

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Fwd: Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 21:14       ` [TUHS] Re: Fwd: " Theodore Ts'o
@ 2022-09-21 21:46         ` Clem Cole
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2022-09-21 21:46 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Theodore Ts'o; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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Sure.  And of course there will always be interpretations of how much one
idea salted another.  But the seeds of the discomfort come from these
various solutions and frankly how much the original authors were bought
into/part of the integration process.


On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 5:14 PM Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 10:57:51AM -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
> > The legal term '*copyright*' and historical term of '*provenance*.'    I
> > agree with Warner that I know of few if any cases where copyright was not
> > maintained when it was in the code itself.  And as he points out, please
> > grep through the archives and I think that will be found to hold true.
> >
> > But I also think Rob rankle comment is fair.  Joy and was noted for
> > recognizing cool ideas and adding them into 'Berkeley UNIX.  The line at
> > the time was he took ideas and '*peed on them to make them smell like
> > Berkeley*.' For example, 'Berkeley Joy Control' came from Kulp via Europe
> > and MIT, the network stack famously started at BBN, and a lot of the
> > support for limits and user controllers from Australia.
> >
> > Yes, the CSRG team did do a great deal of innovation as well as
> > integration, but the line between the two was not always easy to see from
> > the outside.
>
> Well, there can be a huge spectrum here, isn't there?   Ranging from:
>
> * Take the code wholesale with no changes.
>
> * Take the code and make changes to match with local coding style.
>
> * Take the code and serially rewrite it so when you're done it
>   only vaguely resembles the original contribution.
>
> * Look at the code, get the ideas, and the reimplement it from
>   scratch, keeping the existing interface (or using the existing
>   interface as a starting point before extending it)
>
> * Look at the code, get the ideas, and reimplent it from scratch
>   with radically different interfaces.
>
> It sounds like all of these were used to some extent as part of the
> BSD/CSRG integration process; is that right?
>
>                                                 - Ted
>
-- 
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual

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* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 12:36 ` [TUHS] " Rob Pike
  2022-09-21 13:33   ` Marc Donner
  2022-09-21 13:46   ` Warner Losh
@ 2022-09-21 21:49   ` Phil Budne
  2022-09-21 22:07     ` Rich Salz
  2022-09-21 22:09     ` Dan Cross
  2 siblings, 2 replies; 25+ messages in thread
From: Phil Budne @ 2022-09-21 21:49 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Not to excuse the failure of the BSD team to properly attribute source
origin by adding only their copyright notice, but didn't AT&T try
unfair turnabout by not properly attributing the origins of their
TCP/IP code?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc._v._Berkeley_Software_Design,_Inc.#University's_countersuit

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 15:25       ` Warner Losh
@ 2022-09-21 22:06         ` Bakul Shah
  2022-09-21 22:20           ` Warner Losh
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread
From: Bakul Shah @ 2022-09-21 22:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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On Sep 21, 2022, at 8:25 AM, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com <mailto:imp@bsdimp.com>> wrote:
> 
> That makes a lot of sense. When there was a name, it was preserved, but a huge amount of the sources had nothing at all in the source files to identify it. One big area of contribution was into the kernel where the options sometimes contained the name of where the code came from. In the 2BSD kernels we see eg TEXAS_AUTOBAUD, MENLO_OVLY, MENLO_KOV, MENLO_JCL, MPX_FILS, CGL_RTP and a bunch of UCB_ names. It's clear the non UCB ones came from elsewhere, but there's no info on where they came from (they are documented in setup.5 at least so I know what they are). So given the sparseness of the early marking for provenance, the coments make more sense and give a better timeframe to it.

Recall that the US joined the Berne Convention in 1988. As I recall prior to that you had to stick to some copyright formalities such as putting your copyright & year in the source code. As I recall the US law didn't protect your copyright if you didn't do this in sources. This may have played a part in UCB adding a copyright source files that didn't have anything? I could be wrong but these are just some random bits picked up at the time. I did get in the habit of putting at least a one line copyright notice by default starting in 1981 (either for whatever company I worked for at the time or my own copyright for code I wrote on my own at home).

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* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 21:49   ` [TUHS] " Phil Budne
@ 2022-09-21 22:07     ` Rich Salz
  2022-09-21 22:24       ` Warner Losh
  2022-09-21 22:09     ` Dan Cross
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread
From: Rich Salz @ 2022-09-21 22:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Phil Budne; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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Recall also that the AT&T code was protected by "trade secret" claims, so
that and the Berne convention meant a copyright on each file wasn't needed.
As the copyright moved to being used as a license, doing so became more
important.

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* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 21:49   ` [TUHS] " Phil Budne
  2022-09-21 22:07     ` Rich Salz
@ 2022-09-21 22:09     ` Dan Cross
  2022-09-21 22:19       ` Steve Nickolas
  2022-09-22  7:08       ` [TUHS] " Andy Kosela
  1 sibling, 2 replies; 25+ messages in thread
From: Dan Cross @ 2022-09-21 22:09 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Phil Budne; +Cc: tuhs

On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 5:50 PM Phil Budne <phil@ultimate.com> wrote:
> Not to excuse the failure of the BSD team to properly attribute source
> origin by adding only their copyright notice, but didn't AT&T try
> unfair turnabout by not properly attributing the origins of their
> TCP/IP code?

One of my favorite copyright notices was for /bin/true in System V.
An empty file got turned into 7 lines of comments holding copyright
boilerplate and an `#ident` line with an SCCS version number:
progress!

        - Dan C.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 22:09     ` Dan Cross
@ 2022-09-21 22:19       ` Steve Nickolas
  2022-09-21 22:44         ` Joseph Holsten
  2022-09-22  7:08       ` [TUHS] " Andy Kosela
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread
From: Steve Nickolas @ 2022-09-21 22:19 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

On Wed, 21 Sep 2022, Dan Cross wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 5:50 PM Phil Budne <phil@ultimate.com> wrote:
>> Not to excuse the failure of the BSD team to properly attribute source
>> origin by adding only their copyright notice, but didn't AT&T try
>> unfair turnabout by not properly attributing the origins of their
>> TCP/IP code?
>
> One of my favorite copyright notices was for /bin/true in System V.
> An empty file got turned into 7 lines of comments holding copyright
> boilerplate and an `#ident` line with an SCCS version number:
> progress!
>
>        - Dan C.
>

And then when I wrote it for my own project:

true -

#!/bin/sh
# Does something this small need a license? - SVN
exit 0

false -

#!/bin/sh
# Does something this small need a license? - SVN
exit 1

-uso.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 22:06         ` [TUHS] " Bakul Shah
@ 2022-09-21 22:20           ` Warner Losh
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread
From: Warner Losh @ 2022-09-21 22:20 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Bakul Shah; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 4:07 PM Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org> wrote:

> On Sep 21, 2022, at 8:25 AM, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>
>
> That makes a lot of sense. When there was a name, it was preserved, but a
> huge amount of the sources had nothing at all in the source files to
> identify it. One big area of contribution was into the kernel where the
> options sometimes contained the name of where the code came from. In the
> 2BSD kernels we see eg TEXAS_AUTOBAUD, MENLO_OVLY, MENLO_KOV, MENLO_JCL,
> MPX_FILS, CGL_RTP and a bunch of UCB_ names. It's clear the non UCB ones
> came from elsewhere, but there's no info on where they came from (they are
> documented in setup.5 at least so I know what they are). So given the
> sparseness of the early marking for provenance, the coments make more sense
> and give a better timeframe to it.
>
>
> Recall that the US joined the Berne Convention in 1988. As I recall prior
> to that you had to stick to some copyright formalities such as putting your
> copyright & year in the source code. As I recall the US law didn't protect
> your copyright if you didn't do this in sources. This may have played a
> part in UCB adding a copyright source files that didn't have anything? I
> could be wrong but these are just some random bits picked up at the time. I
> did get in the habit of putting at least a one line copyright notice by
> default starting in 1981 (either for whatever company I worked for at the
> time or my own copyright for code I wrote on my own at home).
>

Indeed. One of the reasons that USL settled was because they released 32V
without the proper copyright notices (whatever that means, but in this case
there were none at all in the media) and the judge issued a preliminary
ruling declaring that 32V didn't have copyright protection. They were
scared of losing that and that motivated them to settle.

Interestingly, in the settlement, USL specifically agrees not to pursue
trade secret claims against anybody using 4.4BSD-lite, but copyrights
aren't mentioned, outside of the restricted files getting an USL copyright
added:

"c. USL agrees that it shall take no action against any person who utilizes
any methods and concepts in the restricted
files which as of this date have become available to the general public by
acts not attributable to the University,
its employees or students...."

and "i. USL agrees that it shall take no action base on the use or
distribution by any person of material
contained in the Unrestricted Files."

also (for another message in the thread)

"f. USL agrees that it shall affix the University Copyright Notice and the
University Acknowledgement to the
files in exhibit C.." Where the wording of those phrases is defined
elsewhere in the settlement. And there's
about 8 paragraphs as to exactly how AT&T will do this in both code and
documentation...

Warner

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* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 22:07     ` Rich Salz
@ 2022-09-21 22:24       ` Warner Losh
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread
From: Warner Losh @ 2022-09-21 22:24 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Rich Salz; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 4:09 PM Rich Salz <rich.salz@gmail.com> wrote:

> Recall also that the AT&T code was protected by "trade secret" claims, so
> that and the Berne convention meant a copyright on each file wasn't needed.
> As the copyright moved to being used as a license, doing so became more
> important.
>

Indeed. The lack of copyright notices prior to Berne was also a big problem
for enforcing copyright claims, which is why most companies relied on trade
secrets prior to the mid 80s. It's a big reason, I think, the settlement
punted on trade secret protections, but made a big deal about respecting
each other's copyrights (despite preliminary rulings casting doubt in that
area).

Warner

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* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 22:19       ` Steve Nickolas
@ 2022-09-21 22:44         ` Joseph Holsten
  2022-09-21 23:53           ` Chet Ramey
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread
From: Joseph Holsten @ 2022-09-21 22:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Steve Nickolas; +Cc: tuhs

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> On Sep 21, 2022, at 15:18, Steve Nickolas <usotsuki@buric.co> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 21 Sep 2022, Dan Cross wrote:
> 
>>> On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 5:50 PM Phil Budne <phil@ultimate.com> wrote:
>>> Not to excuse the failure of the BSD team to properly attribute source
>>> origin by adding only their copyright notice, but didn't AT&T try
>>> unfair turnabout by not properly attributing the origins of their
>>> TCP/IP code?
>> 
>> One of my favorite copyright notices was for /bin/true in System V.
>> An empty file got turned into 7 lines of comments holding copyright
>> boilerplate and an `#ident` line with an SCCS version number:
>> progress!
>> 
>>       - Dan C.
>> 
> 
> And then when I wrote it for my own project:
> 
> true -
> 
> #!/bin/sh
> # Does something this small need a license? - SVN
> exit 0
> 
> false -
> 
> #!/bin/sh
> # Does something this small need a license? - SVN
> exit 1
> 
> -uso.

I’ve thought of this example many times when the 9fans minimalists talk about empty-file `true` impls.

Which of course would lead to the 3.8k reported issues of https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode

--
~j

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 22:44         ` Joseph Holsten
@ 2022-09-21 23:53           ` Chet Ramey
  2022-09-22  0:32             ` Rob Pike
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread
From: Chet Ramey @ 2022-09-21 23:53 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Joseph Holsten, Steve Nickolas; +Cc: tuhs

On 9/21/22 6:44 PM, Joseph Holsten wrote:

> I’ve thought of this example many times when the 9fans minimalists talk 
> about empty-file `true` impls.
> 
> Which of course would lead to the 3.8k reported issues of 
> https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode 
> <https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode>

My favorites are the ones that ask to add a scripting language to the
project.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
		 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 23:53           ` Chet Ramey
@ 2022-09-22  0:32             ` Rob Pike
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread
From: Rob Pike @ 2022-09-22  0:32 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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Around 1977 I was working/volunteering/studying at the Dynamic Graphics Lab
at the University of Toronto, where Unix ran on an 11/45 and we had a bunch
of graphics hardware. Doing graphics on a PDP-11 was a challenge, but we
managed. (For reference: later Dave Tennenhouse made a 256x256x8bit frame
buffer, and that was the size of entire PDP-11 data address space.)

Everyone was jealous of the C/A/T phototypesetter that Bell Labs Research
used to print their documentation. One Friday evening I had the idea to use
our stinky but effective Versatec plotter as an output device for nroff. In
just a few hours - our libraries were already pretty good - I had something
tolerable running. Tom Duff dropped by and helped make it faster by coding
what we would now call the character blitter in assembler. Then Bill Reeves
joined in, and Mike Tilson, and by the end of the weekend we had pretty
good efficient output. (Still nroff; troff came later, mostly due to Bill I
think, who did a lot of work on the character set.) It was grey and blotchy
and smelly, but after a Xerox copy it looked pretty good for the time.

Ron Baecker, who ran the lab and was the graduate advisor for everyone else
- I was just an undergraduate physics student having fun - stopped by on
Monday morning and was furious to see us all hammering on the code.
Everyone was supposed to be working on their thesis and we had spent the
weekend hacking. I was about to be in serious trouble for distracting the
graduate students. But then he saw the output and completely changed his
tune: "Can I use this to print out my new grant proposal?"

For context, consider this: I used the system for my 4th year optics
project report. The professor was furious with me for copying someone's
work. He did not believe it possible to create output like that (and to be
fair, it wasn't possible almost anywhere else). I had to take him to the
lab and show him how I did it before he would let me pass the course. Until
then, no one had seen a student capable of making text look good.

The software went on the Toronto tape, with a top-of-file comment crediting
me, Bill, Tom, and Mike. It emerged again from Berkeley with that comment
replaced by the Regents' rankling rewrite.

When I interviewed at Bell Labs, Dennis Ritchie saw on my resume that I
claimed to have worked on the Versatec text output system. He asked why I
had bothered, when Berkeley had already done it. "Because we wrote it
first, and Berkeley took the credit," I said. Berkeley did tweak it, but
honestly it was mostly our work.

I didn't care so much about losing credit for the code, but the idea was
100% mine, and for a young punk the loss of credit was upsetting. Later
Henry Spencer, another Toronto graduate, explained the story on Usenet. I
don't know if he was believed, and through the 1980s it remained the
"Berkeley typesetting software."

It was all long ago, but seeing that "Regents" comment is, as we say today,
triggering.

But to be fair to Dennis, he believed me, and maybe that helped me get
hired.

-rob

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-21 22:09     ` Dan Cross
  2022-09-21 22:19       ` Steve Nickolas
@ 2022-09-22  7:08       ` Andy Kosela
  2022-09-22 17:44         ` [TUHS] " Dan Cross
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread
From: Andy Kosela @ 2022-09-22  7:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dan Cross; +Cc: tuhs

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On Thursday, September 22, 2022, Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 5:50 PM Phil Budne <phil@ultimate.com> wrote:
> > Not to excuse the failure of the BSD team to properly attribute source
> > origin by adding only their copyright notice, but didn't AT&T try
> > unfair turnabout by not properly attributing the origins of their
> > TCP/IP code?
>
> One of my favorite copyright notices was for /bin/true in System V.
> An empty file got turned into 7 lines of comments holding copyright
> boilerplate and an `#ident` line with an SCCS version number:
> progress!
>
>
That reminds me of the excellent dissertation of  Gerald Holzmann on Code
Inflation[1].  The situation is even worse now and honestly I don't see it
will improve in the future.  My take on the code inflation problem is that
today without paid "volunteers" (from IBM, Oracle, Google, etc.) a large
chunk of our modern software landscape would just collapse.  It is not 90s
Internet anymore where hobbyists did it for fun, because frankly back then
it was fun... Nowadays... not that much.

--Andy

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-22  7:08       ` [TUHS] " Andy Kosela
@ 2022-09-22 17:44         ` Dan Cross
  2022-09-22 18:44           ` Bakul Shah
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 25+ messages in thread
From: Dan Cross @ 2022-09-22 17:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Andy Kosela; +Cc: tuhs

On Thu, Sep 22, 2022 at 3:08 AM Andy Kosela <akosela@andykosela.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, September 22, 2022, Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 5:50 PM Phil Budne <phil@ultimate.com> wrote:
>> > Not to excuse the failure of the BSD team to properly attribute source
>> > origin by adding only their copyright notice, but didn't AT&T try
>> > unfair turnabout by not properly attributing the origins of their
>> > TCP/IP code?
>>
>> One of my favorite copyright notices was for /bin/true in System V.
>> An empty file got turned into 7 lines of comments holding copyright
>> boilerplate and an `#ident` line with an SCCS version number:
>> progress!
>
> That reminds me of the excellent dissertation of  Gerald Holzmann on Code Inflation[1].  The situation is even worse now and honestly I don't see it will improve in the future.  My take on the code inflation problem is that today without paid "volunteers" (from IBM, Oracle, Google, etc.) a large chunk of our modern software landscape would just collapse.  It is not 90s Internet anymore where hobbyists did it for fun, because frankly back then it was fun... Nowadays... not that much.

Indeed. Ted has made this point frequently; Linux for example
basically requires corporate sponsors to get new features into
the kernel. Sure, some individual might come up with a great
idea and implementation that'll make it in, but that's the exception
rather than the norm.

The flip side is that there's a lot of load-bearing infrastructure
that is barely maintained, if at all. This xkcd seems perennially
relevant: https://xkcd.com/2347/

I suppose the situation may be summed up as extremes at both
ends. In any event, it's not great.

        - Dan C.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: Early BSD license thread
  2022-09-22 17:44         ` [TUHS] " Dan Cross
@ 2022-09-22 18:44           ` Bakul Shah
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 25+ messages in thread
From: Bakul Shah @ 2022-09-22 18:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dan Cross; +Cc: tuhs

On Sep 22, 2022, at 10:44 AM, Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Sep 22, 2022 at 3:08 AM Andy Kosela <akosela@andykosela.com> wrote:
>> On Thursday, September 22, 2022, Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 5:50 PM Phil Budne <phil@ultimate.com> wrote:
>>>> Not to excuse the failure of the BSD team to properly attribute source
>>>> origin by adding only their copyright notice, but didn't AT&T try
>>>> unfair turnabout by not properly attributing the origins of their
>>>> TCP/IP code?
>>> 
>>> One of my favorite copyright notices was for /bin/true in System V.
>>> An empty file got turned into 7 lines of comments holding copyright
>>> boilerplate and an `#ident` line with an SCCS version number:
>>> progress!
>> 
>> That reminds me of the excellent dissertation of  Gerald Holzmann on Code Inflation[1].  The situation is even worse now and honestly I don't see it will improve in the future.  My take on the code inflation problem is that today without paid "volunteers" (from IBM, Oracle, Google, etc.) a large chunk of our modern software landscape would just collapse.  It is not 90s Internet anymore where hobbyists did it for fun, because frankly back then it was fun... Nowadays... not that much.
> 
> Indeed. Ted has made this point frequently; Linux for example
> basically requires corporate sponsors to get new features into
> the kernel. Sure, some individual might come up with a great
> idea and implementation that'll make it in, but that's the exception
> rather than the norm.
> 
> The flip side is that there's a lot of load-bearing infrastructure
> that is barely maintained, if at all. This xkcd seems perennially
> relevant: https://xkcd.com/2347/
> 
> I suppose the situation may be summed up as extremes at both
> ends. In any event, it's not great.

Any sufficiently complicated technology is indistinguishable
from magic! (apologies for mangling Clarke's Third Law)


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2022-09-22 18:46 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 25+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2022-09-21 10:10 [TUHS] Early BSD license thread Warner Losh
2022-09-21 12:36 ` [TUHS] " Rob Pike
2022-09-21 13:33   ` Marc Donner
2022-09-21 13:46   ` Warner Losh
2022-09-21 14:50     ` Rich Salz
2022-09-21 14:58       ` Warner Losh
2022-09-21 15:06         ` Miod Vallat
2022-09-21 14:57     ` [TUHS] Fwd: " Clem Cole
2022-09-21 15:09       ` [TUHS] " Larry McVoy
2022-09-21 15:25       ` Warner Losh
2022-09-21 22:06         ` [TUHS] " Bakul Shah
2022-09-21 22:20           ` Warner Losh
2022-09-21 21:14       ` [TUHS] Re: Fwd: " Theodore Ts'o
2022-09-21 21:46         ` Clem Cole
2022-09-21 21:49   ` [TUHS] " Phil Budne
2022-09-21 22:07     ` Rich Salz
2022-09-21 22:24       ` Warner Losh
2022-09-21 22:09     ` Dan Cross
2022-09-21 22:19       ` Steve Nickolas
2022-09-21 22:44         ` Joseph Holsten
2022-09-21 23:53           ` Chet Ramey
2022-09-22  0:32             ` Rob Pike
2022-09-22  7:08       ` [TUHS] " Andy Kosela
2022-09-22 17:44         ` [TUHS] " Dan Cross
2022-09-22 18:44           ` Bakul Shah

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