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From: jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson)
Newsgroups: net.emacs
Subject: Re: distributing gnu - let's think a
Message-ID: <2633@teddy.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-May-86 13:00:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: teddy.2633
Posted: Mon May 19 13:00:17 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 21-May-86 01:11:41 EDT
References: <5373@alice>
Reply-To: jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson)
Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass.
Lines: 21

In article <5373@alice> ark%alice@alice.UUCP writes:
>Subject: Re: distributing gnu - let's think about this
>
>> I agree, since my company (yes, that is the owner of the Death Star
>> up there on the organization line) would probably object very strongly
>
>It's worse that that.  I think that employee of many companies won't
>even be allowed to *use* Gnu.

I recently obtained a copy of BISON (the GNU yacc equivalent).  It appears
that every C file genrated by BISON contains the GNU copyright.  I contacted
Richard Stallman to make sure this was not accidental - his reply was that
this copyright was included in the generated C source file because it includes
a copy of the parser written by him.  To the best of my understanding, this
implies that I cannot sell any program that uses BISON to generate a parser
- In fact, I must be willing to give away that C source.

Richard didn't seem very upset when I suggested that I couldn't use
BISON if I had to give away the generated C program.  In fact, He was
quite pleased (something like:  He was just as pleased as if a gun he'd
manufactured couldn't be used for murder).