Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!stl!stc!root44!hrc63!pj
From: pj@hrc63.uucp (Mr P Johnson "Baddow")
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: libg++ and copylefts
Message-ID: <644@hrc63.uucp>
Date: 24 Jul 89 10:42:35 GMT
References: <2053@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <6590203@hplsla.HP.COM> <904@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Organization: GEC Hirst Research Centre, Wembley, England. (uk.co.gec-rl-hrc)
Lines: 22


Surely you can get around the GNU copyleft by selling the customer a set of
objects which s/he then links with the GNU libraries (which you happen to
have proided according to the terms of the GNU license).

With "bison", this is not so easy, but it is still possible.  One way might
be to take the parser, diff it with the skeleton bison parser, and sell the
diff files and a script to reconstitute and compile your parser (or you
could just sell the parser source and have done).  The other input (the
skeleton bison parser) will of course be handed to the client free.  Just to
make it totaly clear, you could put all your stuff on one tape and the GNU
stuff on another tape.

Alternatively you could allege that this could be done, and that therefore
selling a tape with an executable on it plus another tape containing the GNU
source is equivalent and therefore legal.  The FSF might be able to persuade
a court otherwise, but I would not  bet on it.
-- 
Paul Johnson,         | `The moving finger writes, And having writ, moves on,'
GEC-Marconi Research  |                    Omar Kyham when contemplating `vi'.
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