* [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 [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 625 bytes --] 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 [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 827 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* [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 [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1128 bytes --] 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 > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1880 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* [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 [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1788 bytes --] 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 >> > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3140 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* [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 [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3598 bytes --] 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 >> > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 5119 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* [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 [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 375 bytes --] 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? :) [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 449 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* [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 [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1321 bytes --] 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? :) > > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1958 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* [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] 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 [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2083 bytes --] 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 [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 5432 bytes --] ^ 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 [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2932 bytes --] 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 [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 6462 bytes --] ^ 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 [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1442 bytes --] 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). [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2369 bytes --] ^ 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 [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2877 bytes --] 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 [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3930 bytes --] ^ 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 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 [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2144 bytes --] 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 [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2865 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* [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 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 [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 233 bytes --] 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. [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 292 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* [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 [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 704 bytes --] 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 [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1109 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 25+ messages in thread
* [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 22:19 ` 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 [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1170 bytes --] > 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 [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3137 bytes --] ^ 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 [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3058 bytes --] 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 [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4788 bytes --] ^ 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 [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1092 bytes --] 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 [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1450 bytes --] ^ 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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