From e5795b70c403b1673f54d12621b8e670f5a7377d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Kiyoshi Aman Date: Tue, 28 May 2019 19:21:23 -0500 Subject: usr.bin/compress: remove, as it is handled by ncompress --- usr.bin/compress/doc/NOTES | 139 --------------------------------------------- 1 file changed, 139 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 usr.bin/compress/doc/NOTES (limited to 'usr.bin/compress/doc/NOTES') diff --git a/usr.bin/compress/doc/NOTES b/usr.bin/compress/doc/NOTES deleted file mode 100644 index 26181bf..0000000 --- a/usr.bin/compress/doc/NOTES +++ /dev/null @@ -1,139 +0,0 @@ -From: James A. Woods - ->From vn Fri Dec 2 18:05:27 1988 -Subject: Re: Looking for C source for RSA -Newsgroups: sci.crypt - -# Illegitimi noncarborundum - -Patents are a tar pit. - -A good case can be made that most are just a license to sue, and nothing -is illegal until a patent is upheld in court. - -For example, if you receive netnews by means other than 'nntp', -these very words are being modulated by 'compress', -a variation on the patented Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm. - -Original Ziv-Lempel is patent number 4,464,650, and the more powerful -LZW method is #4,558,302. Yet despite any similarities between 'compress' -and LZW (the public-domain 'compress' code was designed and given to the -world before the ink on the Welch patent was dry), no attorneys from Sperry -(the assignee) have asked you to unplug your Usenet connection. - -Why? I can't speak for them, but it is possible the claims are too broad, -or, just as bad, not broad enough. ('compress' does things not mentioned -in the Welch patent.) Maybe they realize that they can commercialize -LZW better by selling hardware implementations rather than by licensing -software. Again, the LZW software delineated in the patent is *not* -the same as that of 'compress'. - -At any rate, court-tested software patents are a different animal; -corporate patents in a portfolio are usually traded like baseball cards -to shut out small fry rather than actually be defended before -non-technical juries. Perhaps RSA will undergo this test successfully, -although the grant to "exclude others from making, using, or selling" -the invention would then only apply to the U.S. (witness the -Genentech patent of the TPA molecule in the U.S. but struck down -in Great Britain as too broad.) - -The concept is still exotic for those who learned in school the rule of thumb -that one may patent "apparatus" but not an "idea". -Apparently this all changed in Diamond v. Diehr (1981) when the U. S. Supreme -Court reversed itself. - -Scholars should consult the excellent article in the Washington and Lee -Law Review (fall 1984, vol. 41, no. 4) by Anthony and Colwell for a -comprehensive survey of an area which will remain murky for some time. - -Until the dust clears, how you approach ideas which are patented depends -on how paranoid you are of a legal onslaught. Arbitrary? Yes. But -the patent bar the CCPA (Court of Customs and Patent Appeals) -thanks you for any uncertainty as they, at least, stand to gain -from any trouble. - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= -From: James A. Woods -Subject: Re: Looking for C source for RSA (actually 'compress' patents) - - In article <2042@eos.UUCP> you write: - >The concept is still exotic for those who learned in school the rule of thumb - >that one may patent "apparatus" but not an "idea". - -A rule of thumb that has never been completely valid, as any chemical -engineer can tell you. (Chemical processes were among the earliest patents, -as I recall.) - - ah yes -- i date myself when relaying out-of-date advice from elderly - attorneys who don't even specialize in patents. one other interesting - class of patents include the output of optical lens design programs, - which yield formulae which can then fairly directly can be molded - into glass. although there are restrictions on patenting equations, - the "embedded systems" seem to fly past the legal gauntlets. - - anyway, i'm still learning about intellectual property law after - several conversations from a unisys (nee sperry) lawyer re 'compress'. - - it's more complicated than this, but they're letting (oral - communication only) software versions of 'compress' slide - as far as licensing fees go. this includes 'arc', 'stuffit', - and other commercial wrappers for 'compress'. yet they are - signing up licensees for hardware chips. hewlett-packard - supposedly has an active vlsi project, and unisys has - board-level lzw-based tape controllers. (to build lzw into - a disk controller would be strange, as you'd have to build - in a filesystem too!) - - it's byzantine - that unisys is in a tiff with hp regarding the patents, - after discovering some sort of "compress" button on some - hp terminal product. why? well, professor abraham lempel jumped - from being department chairman of computer science at technion in - israel to sperry (where he got the first patent), but then to work - at hewlett-packard on sabbatical. the second welch patent - is only weakly derivative of the first, so they want chip - licenses and hp relented. however, everyone agrees something - like the current unix implementation is the way to go with - software, so hp (and ucb) long ago asked spencer thomas and i to sign - off on copyright permission (although they didn't need to, it being pd). - lempel, hp, and unisys grumbles they can't make money off the - software since a good free implementation (not the best -- - i have more ideas!) escaped via usenet. (lempel's own pascal - code was apparently horribly slow.) - i don't follow the ibm 'arc' legal bickering; my impression - is that the pc folks are making money off the archiver/wrapper - look/feel of the thing [if ms-dos can be said to have a look and feel]. - - now where is telebit with the compress firmware? in a limbo - netherworld, probably, with sperry still welcoming outfits - to sign patent licenses, a common tactic to bring other small fry - into the fold. the guy who crammed 12-bit compess into the modem - there left. also what is transpiring with 'compress' and sys 5 rel 4? - beats me, but if sperry got a hold of them on these issues, - at&t would likely re-implement another algorithm if they - thought 'compress' infringes. needful to say, i don't think - it does after the abovementioned legal conversation. - my own beliefs on whether algorithms should be patentable at all - change with the weather. if the courts finally nail down - patent protection for algorithms, academic publication in - textbooks will be somewhat at odds with the engineering world, - where the textbook codes will simply be a big tease to get - money into the patent holder coffers... - - oh, if you implement lzw from the patent, you won't get - good rates because it doesn't mention adaptive table reset, - lack thereof being *the* serious deficiency of thomas' first version. - - now i know that patent law generally protects against independent - re-invention (like the 'xor' hash function pleasantly mentioned - in the patent [but not the paper]). - but the upshot is that if anyone ever wanted to sue us, - we're partially covered with - independently-developed twists, plus the fact that some of us work - in a bureacratic morass (as contractor to a public agency in my case). - - quite a mess, huh? i've wanted to tell someone this stuff - for a long time, for posterity if nothing else. - -james - -- cgit v1.2.3-60-g2f50