Commons:Deletion requests/File:Ken Thompson (sitting) and Dennis Ritchie at PDP-11 (2876612463).jpg

File:Ken Thompson (sitting) and Dennis Ritchie at PDP-11 (2876612463).jpg

Based on information at the Village pump discussion, I would believe that this image is not freely licensed. I encourage a read through there first. The Flickr user Peter Hamer is unlikely to be the photographer or rights holder. We have evidence that the most likely copyright holder would be Lucent Technologies or Bell Laboratories. The tag was recently changed to {{PD-US-no notice}} "based on discussion", but we have no evidence of such. All examples of publication we have are from the 1990s and onward, in the Scientific American and online - which are all credited to Lucent/Bell. Just because it was taken in the 1970s does not automatically make it public domain. We need to see a publicity/press photo scan or a magazine without any form of notice for the template to be valid. If someone could locate earlier examples of publication it would help with a more definitive answer. It is very possible Peter Hamer was the original photographer, but there isn't a strong case to support this. As of now, I would be inclined to delete this under COM:PRP. PascalHD (talk) 23:01, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

It was pretty widespread on the net when it was uploaded to Flickr. Tineye has loads of hits from 2008 (from before upload to Flickr let alone here) which is as far back as their archives go I think. Unless Peter Hamer was a Bell Labs employee I would seriously doubt that was the real source. Lucent definitely had it on their website at one point; I did find a 1999 archive.org link to a copy on their website (which is not stored by archive.org). There is a similar photo at the Computer History Museum; that was a print donated by Gwen Bell (wife of Gordon Bell), so they likely had copies of prints from a long time ago. The couple had founded a computer museum in Boston, which gave much of its archives to the Computer History Museum in 2000, though the date on that link is 2015. It's a different photo, but clearly from the same session. A more likely source, as mentioned on the image page, is this Dennis Ritchie page. That is the exact same image as the original upload here (and Flickr). I imagine that page existed at a different location before 2015. Ah yes, earliest version I could find is March 2000, archived here. Someone has since straightened our image which cropped out a bit around the edges. That page says it's a "publicity photo" from 1972, though I doubt there would have been much publicity on Unix from then -- it was a few years later when it started to spread. But, it would certainly seem that copies of photos from that session made their way around. PD-US-no_notice is the only hope for it, and there is some decent circumstantial evidence, but as of yet no direct proof. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:34, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Not sure we have any real evidence of PD-US-no notice. As I said, it's plausible that it was PD-US-no notice, but that doesn't mean we have any evidence. The CHM print, which gives the label on the back, has no notice, but this only matters if copies without a valid notice were indeed distributed. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 19:05, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Gordon Bell worked for DEC so if he got a copy, it was distributed. Although if it says "Lucent", that would have been after 1989 so may not be a help. That is also not the same photo as ours. I agree we don't have any solid evidence. Carl Lindberg (talk) 22:50, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Well... if he worked at Bell Labs, and received a copy during the course of his employment, that might or might not constitute publication. It is more complicated that that. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 06:16, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Gordon Bell worked for Digital Equipment Corporation, and was a primary designer of the PDP-11 computer (among others), one of which is in the photo (it was a computer that Thompson and Ritchie worked on while creating Unix and C). He was most definitely not a Bell Labs employee. Given that it says Lucent on the back though, that distribution would have happened 1996 or later, so in the end that doesn't really help us here. If anything, it may point to these photos only getting around in the late 90s.Carl Lindberg (talk) 13:24, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I've reached out to Nokia Bell Labs for permission and then they replied that

Dear Sir

Due to restrictions on this image we are unable to provide the rights for this image.

Best Regards

Robert

based on this, I have to support its deletion. 0x0a (talk) 07:18, 7 February 2024 (UTC)