9fans archive / 1995 / 04 / 90 / prev next From: MAILER-DAEMON@ncr... MAILER-DAEMON@ncr... Subject: Returned mail Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 00:20:03 -0400 Your mail could not be delivered because of the following reason: ----- Transcript of session follows ----- Executing: /usr/lib/mail/localmail gnenych /usr/lib/mail/localmail: IO error copying message: No space left on device server "/usr/lib/mail/localmail" failed - input/output error ----- Unsent message follows ----- >From ncrgw1!cse.psu.edu!9fans Wed Apr 12 00:30 EDT 1995 remote from ncrhub4 Received: by ncrhub4.ATTGIS.COM; 12 Apr 95 00:30:18 EDT Received: by ncrgw1.ATTGIS.COM; 11 Apr 95 23:35:21 EDT Received: by psuvax1.cse.psu.edu id <34090>; Tue, 11 Apr 1995 20:11:12 -0400 Received: from plg.uwaterloo.ca ([129.97.140.10]) by psuvax1.cse.psu.edu with SMTP id <34095>; Tue, 11 Apr 1995 20:07:01 -0400 Received: by plg.uwaterloo.ca id <23549>; Tue, 11 Apr 1995 20:03:02 -0400 From: Dave Mason <dmason@plg...> To: 9fans@cse... Subject: Plan 9 encumbrance In-Reply-To: <95Apr9.002400edt.45919@col...> References: <95Apr9.002400edt.45919@col...> Message-Id: <95Apr11.200302edt.23549@plg...> Date: Tue, 11 Apr 1995 20:02:56 -0400 Sender: owner-9fans@cse... Precedence: bulk Reply-To: 9fans@cse... dmr@pla... writes: > The terms of the new Plan 9 distribution will be much more liberal [... and look completely reasonable ] > By contrast, Unix source licenses were and are fearsome documents, > with references to trade-secret "methods and concepts" and > restrictions on use even for educational purposes. > > Fundamentally, USL sued BSDI and then UC Berkeley for producing > a Unix clone (and lost). BSDI and UCB's CSRG thought this > was a worthwhile thing to do because the real thing was overpriced > and hard to get. Plan 9 will be cheap and easy to get. > Situations change, and we learn. My question is: If I get and read and enjoy your distribution, and then decide I want to write a commercial equivalent of some part of Plan 9 (say my own implementation of Alef to run under Windows-NT -- don't worry, I already went and washed my mouth out), what will AT&T and/or its lawyers say about it? Or I think I see how to build the kernel better? As an OS researcher, this is a *very* relevant question for me. While the USL silliness was going on I was thanking my lucky stars that I'd never looked at any Unix system code. What about the authors of vsta (a plan-9 inspired system about to release version 1.4)? Must they *not* look at the plan-9 code? They currently don't use exactly the message format that plan-9 does... what if they change to use the right one? Very much looking forward to the release... if I can look at it. ../Dave