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From: jpn@teddy.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Public Domain Yacc (Important)
Message-ID: <3740@teddy.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 6-Feb-87 11:53:06 EST
Article-I.D.: teddy.3740
Posted: Fri Feb  6 11:53:06 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Feb-87 19:45:26 EST
References: <142@ems.UUCP> <1170@husc6.UUCP> <867@epimass.UUCP>
Reply-To: jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson)
Distribution: world
Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass.
Lines: 20

>                                                     If you really
>want a pd yacc, "bison" is available from the Gnu project, and you
>won't be vulnerable to a suit.

Well, not by AT&T.  However, people should be aware that bison inserts
a copy of the GNU copyright into every generated C file.  I had an
electronic conversation with Richard Stallman about this - my argument
was that while is was quite reasonable to put "bison" under GNU
copyright, I felt it was overkill to put the C file generated from the
yacc source under GNU copyright as well.  He wasn't convinced.  He feels
that all new software in the world should be GNUware.  Anyway, I
refuse to use any tool that makes such a restriction on it's use
(even if such a restriction is totally unenforcable!)

Anyway, I bought a copy of the Austin Codeworks "yacc" (which is the
same version that was posted to USENET, I believe), along with an
attribute grammer preprocessor for YACC (called PREP) for $25.  THEY
SAY it is public domain.  MY feeling is that if anyone is to get sued,
it is THEM, not ME!  Check out any micro magazine, they only distribute
on MS_DOS format disks.