Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!odi!benson
From: benson@odi.com (Benson I. Margulies)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: libg++ and copylefts
Message-ID: <396@odi.ODI.COM>
Date: 22 Jul 89 20:21:00 GMT
References: <6613@madmax.UUCP> <18684@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: benson@odi.com (Benson I. Margulies)
Organization: Object Design Inc., Burlington, MA
Lines: 39

In article <18684@mimsy.UUCP> dbk@mimsy.UUCP (Dan Kozak) writes:
>From article <6613@madmax.UUCP>, by charliek@madmax.UUCP (Charlie Krasic):
>
>> Sounds good, but what about stuff like Bison and Flex?
>> I'm new to GNU (and Unix) software, but my understanding is that these
>> programs insert code.  In order to get a working product you have to mix
>> your own code with theirs (FSF).   
>
>True of Bison, I'm not sure about Flex.  

Definitely not true of flex. 

I note in passing a few things:

1) the relevant piece of bison is a not-particularly-special
implementation of published algorithms. If you can't afford a really
good parser generator, all you have to do is re-engineer bison.simple.
If you wanted to have some fun, you could then release that into the
public domain.

2) As the exchange with NeXt demonstrates, the only definition of what
the CopyLeft permits is what rms says it permits. Until there is legal
action, everyone is on their own. Now, one might say, "if you go along
with the intent of the FSF, there's no problem." The following
suggests a possible flaw in this:

Note that "copyleft" depends critically on copyright. FSF or whoever
holds the copyright, and the so-called general public licence grants
some restricted rights to use and make derived works.

Were the FSF to get into serious financial trouble, its copyrights
could wind up owned by anyone. If this anyone didn't have an
ideological belief in socialist software, (and I choose that word to
be descriptive, not red-baiting), they would have a great incentive to
demonstrate that the GPL was somehow legally inoperative, or a least a
lot more restrictive.

-- 
Benson I. Margulies