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From: garry@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU (Garry Wiegand)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: lex and yacc in the public domain (responses)
Message-ID: <267@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU>
Date: Mon, 12-May-86 00:37:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: batcompu.267
Posted: Mon May 12 00:37:37 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 15-May-86 07:01:19 EDT
Reply-To: garry%cadif-oak@cu-arpa.cs.cornell.edu.arpa
Organization: Cornell Engineering && Flying Moose Graphics
Lines: 35

As primeval originator of this (greatly-degenerated) topic, I feel an
urge to lay it to rest. The consensus I've heard is that:

1) AT&T probably claims copyright on all of their unix code. It's
   technically null and void without the notices, but you would
   be well-advised not to get involved.

2) AT&T definitely claims trade-secret licensing on all of their code.
   Many/most campus administrators don't bother to protect the source
   (I'm aware of at least one site where it's available via anonymous
   ftp!), so the trade-secret protection is also of dubious legal value.
   But likewise, that's a technicality and you shouldn't want to get
   involved. It really *is* their code; I agree that legalities are 
   merely legalities.

3) There is an (unconfirmed) report that Yacc was once distributed on a
   Decus tape. That may be the itchy neuron in my head that led me to
   make the original inquiry. I'm really not in the habit of pirating
   software! *what never?* *no never!* *what never ??* *(garbled)*

4) I have not communicated with GNU directly about it, but their Bison
   program appears to be a Yacc look-alike, without documentation, but
   with hints of enhancements (something about quote semantic_parser
   end-quote). It is explicitly public-domain. This is what I'm actually 
   using.

5) On further experiment, Lex turned out to be too absurdly slow; I 
   hard-coded a token-generator. (I just saw a message going by about
   an improved lexer though.)

PS - My original posting had a line at the top saying "Followup-To: net.lang"
     It was universally ignored, and as a result poor defenseless newsgroups
     have been hearing about /bin/true... curious.
-- 
garry wiegand   (garry%cadif-oak@cu-arpa.cs.cornell.edu)