Flavors, Symbolics, and MIT

[bobgian%PSUVAX1.BITNET@Berkeley]

Not wishing to subject myself to a lawsuit, but here I go anyway ...

Symbolics can scream all it wants about lawyers and proprietary rights,
but anything developed for the Lisp Machine by MIT labor is property
of MIT, which chooses to distribute it as public domain (more-or-less)
software cheaply to all askers.

An example is MACSYMA, developed by MIT and then "pirated" for commercial
sale by Symbolics.  Maybe Symbolics has enhanced MACSYMA, but they sure
as h*ll don't OWN MACSYMA.

I don't know the detailed contractual arrangements between Rich Zippel,
MIT, Symbolics, and Flavors, but before giving up I would call MIT's
lawyers, not Symbolics' lawyers.

RMS (Rich Stallman), where are you when we need you??   :-)

  - Bob (who was at MIT during the birth of both the LispMs and Symbolics)

---
Bob Giansiracusa (Dept of Computer Science, Penn State Univ, 814-865-9507)
Arpa:   bobgian%PSUVAX1.BITNET@Berkeley
Bitnet: bobgian@PSUVAX1.BITNET         CSnet:  bobgian@penn-state.CSNET
UUCP:   bobgian@psuvax.UUCP            -or-    allegra!psuvax!bobgian
USnail: 333 Whitmore Lab, Penn State Univ, University Park, PA 16802