SUID Patent (was RE: SCO: "thread creation is about a thousand ti mes faster than on)

From: Marty Fouts (marty@dotcast.com)
Date: Tue Aug 29 2000 - 03:36:04 EDT

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    Unfortunately, you are incorrect. DMR did receive a US Patent (Patent
    #4135240) on the SUID bit. There is at least on text on Unix security that
    contains a copy of the patent in an appendix.

    (see, among other sources, Peter Salus'
    http://www.nluug.nl/events/sane98/aftermath/salus.html)

    You can view the actual patent in the IBM patent database, by the way:

    http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?&pn=US04135240__

    Speaking of Salus, I believe it was Peter who coined "the difference between
    theory and practice is always larger in practice."

    Marty

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Alexander Viro [mailto:viro@math.psu.edu]
    Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2000 12:22 AM
    To: Albert D. Cahalan
    Cc: Alan Cox; yodaiken@fsmlabs.com; Horst von Brand; Mitchell Blank Jr;
    Mark Kettenis; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org; torvalds@transmeta.com
    Subject: Re: SCO: "thread creation is about a thousand times faster than
    on

    On Tue, 29 Aug 2000, Albert D. Cahalan wrote:

    > > Erm?
    > > * setuid is a fscking wart - THE mistake of dmr and/or ken.
    >
    > If not urban legend, dmr was the patent owner.

    Erm... That would be a nice way to bury one's mistake - patent it and
    refuse to license ;-) Unfortunately, didn't happen...

    [...]
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