Re: [TUHS] Demise of TeX and groff (was: roff(7))

[Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com>]

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On Mon, Jan 10, 2022 at 9:43 PM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:

> It's docs.  The *roff docs were locked up with the Unix license.


Larry point taken but ... I'm not so sure that specific statement is true.

It may have >>seemed<< that way to you, but I'm fairly sure that in fact,
it was not.   The documents were published independently to the source and
use of the binary license.  I do think that some had an AT&T copyright on
them, but I'm not even sure all of them had a copyright associated.   The
AT&T license in fact explicitly allowed replication of the documents that
came with UNIX could be duplicated and distributed without violating the
license.  Numerous people sold copies of them.  Any (student or not) could
go into the MIT or Harvard Coop and buy a copy.   Same in the Berkeley
area, IIRC Stacy's [a famous Telgraph ave bookstore] had the BSD (as well
as other systems) manuals.

Beyond base duplication, numerous companies published parts of them and in
particular parts if not all of the roff manual.  For instance, a firm in
Seattle called CSSC published a number of reference guides and use guides
based on them [I just found a number of copies of some of them this weekend
as I'm resetting up my basement. I have a number of duplicates that I am
offering to the hive BTW].

I do believe that you are correct that both the sources (and associated
binaries) to original nroff/groff and ditroff were licensed and needed and
an AT&T license, but not the documents themselves.

Clem

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