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From: phr@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Paul Rubin)
Newsgroups: net.emacs
Subject: Re: distributing gnu - (bison copyrights)
Message-ID: <13912@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Wed, 21-May-86 00:06:45 EDT
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Posted: Wed May 21 00:06:45 1986
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Subject: Re: distributing gnu - let's think about this
References: <5373@alice>

In <2633@teddy.uucp> John Nelson says:
>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).

If you generate a C program with GNU Bison that includes RMS's parser,
you have the option of distributing it, under certain terms designed
to encourage maximal cooperation with other programmers.  If you use
Unix Yacc, with the parser written by AT&T, you could not distribute
the resulting C program AT ALL.  Why are you complaining?

By the way, it is not true that the GNU copyright requires you to
distribute (for free or or any other way) any programs affected by it.
It says that *if* you choose to distribute them, *then* you must
distribute them under the same terms as the rest of GNU (i.e., in
source form or with source code available, and with no restrictions on
further redistribution).  This does not prevent you from doing
anything that you could do under a conventional license, which would
not allow redistribution at all.  GNU aims to provide an alternative
to proprietary software, that everyone can use, always.  Allowing GNU
code to be used inside proprietary products would be self-defeating.