[TUHS] Fwd: Re: Early BSD license thread

[Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com>]

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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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