Re^2: MS-DOS PD lex and yacc

[Ned Nowotny]

In article <9288 at chinet.chi.il.us> ignatz at chinet.chi.il.us (Dave Ihnat) writes:
>The gist of this is that, because the GNU copyleft is included with the BISON
>parser files, your application then must be redistributable under the same
>terms.  This is not true.  You might, at most, be responsible for providing
>the GNU parser include files as source, on request--in which case, you would
>most likely provide the entire GNU package.  But RMS and company cannot require
>you to release your code on the basis of their include file.
>
>If this were the case, then the object code compiled by many commercial micro
>compilers would belong to the vendor providing the compiler, since many include
>a copyright notice in the object code.

Of course, it is precisely because vendor include files and library objects
are used in making a binary executable, that some compiler vendors have
historically required licensee's to pay royalties on every binary sold.
The only reason this practice is no longer prevalent is because customers
chose to buy compilers from vendors who did not require royalties.

The same copyright laws that allowed vendors to try and collect royalties,
provide FSF the legal clout to require that you abide by all terms of
their General Purpose License, including the requirement that all
code including FSF licensed software must be distributed under the
terms of the GPL.  (If this is incorrect, a definitive correction
by the FSF lawyer would be most appreciated.)  In any case, just as
commercial vendors are free to forego royalties on binarys which
include their header and library software, FSF could (but will not do so
willingly) release non-GPL code from the terms of the GPL.  Widespread
use of dynamically linked libraries (coupled with the fairly trivial
production of truly PD header files) may make this whole matter moot.


Ned Nowotny, MCC CAD Program, Box 200195, Austin, TX  78720  Ph: (512) 338-3715
ARPA: ned at mcc.com                   UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!milano!cadillac!ned
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