"Yeager recalls, two support staff members, Bosack and Kirk Lougheed, asked him for his original program so they could modify it for the new system. Bosack and Lougheed removed its ability to route non-Internet protocols, keeping its network operating system and related features and improving its Internet capabilities. Later, they added back other protocols.

Yeager said he didn't know that Bosack had recently incorporated Cisco and asked Stanford for permission to sell the Blue Box commercially. He had been denied." [1]

Their whole business was built on this "borrowing" principle, but eventually some of it fired back [2] on the "original" gang, when they went "public" (Sequoia, hated by Lerner).

In essence, the following quote sums it all up: ``The fundamental problem is: how do you negotiate an equitable agreement with crooks?''

[1] http://pdp10.nocrew.org/docs/cisco.html

[2] http://www.pbs.org/opb/nerds2.0.1/serving_suits/cisco.html

... the other take-away:

"I fear the Cisco experience has done unseen damage to Stanford in the form of creating inhibitions against sharing ideas, information and developments with possible commercial value among our groups which have need to benefit from each other's work"

Blatant is not exactly the right word to describe the situation here.

http://tinyurl.com/5mw2ms