Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!mrspoc!starnet!mzellers
From: mzellers@starnet.uucp (Mark Zellers)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: rms says...
Message-ID: <1991Feb10.032707.22452@starnet.uucp>
Date: 10 Feb 91 03:27:07 GMT
References: <21327@yunexus.YorkU.CA> <4607@lib.tmc.edu> <1682@digi.lonestar.org>
Reply-To: mzellers@starnet.UUCP (Mark Zellers)
Organization: Starnet Connections---Public Access UNIX
Lines: 26

In article <1682@digi.lonestar.org> kgallagh@digi.lonestar.org (Kevin Gallagher) writes:
>
>RMS (and FSF) are offering to let you have and use their software without charge,
>provided you do not attempt to make a personal profit by re-selling all or part
>of their work.  Just because they do not charge to let you use it does not mean
>that they have to give up their ownership rights!  

By and large, I agree with the aims of the FSF.  There are areas where I
think the line gets a little murky.  In particular, the fact that the
Bison skeleton parser is covered under the GPV means that the only way
to use Bison to produce code which you might want to sell without
infecting it is to rewrite the parser yourself.  I don't know what the
issues would be with the gcc (and it's library if any).

I guess the way I would look at it, reselling Bison (or gcc) would
clearly be wrong, but I would like it to be possible to use tools
(rather than sell them) and yet retain rights to my own code.  Would
including the skeleton parser in source, along with the output of Bison
with my own code satisfy the requirements of the GPV without infecting
the rest of the code that I wrote on my own?

Note that this is an academic discussion for me, since I don't have a
real product which uses Bison or it's parser.

Mark H. Zellers
decwrl.dec.com!voltaire!bwayne!mark