Re: gperf output licence

[Bruno Haible]

Hi,

Pelle Johansson wrote on 2008-08-13:
> I'd like to know if you consider the output from the GNU gperf program to
> be covered by the GNU GPL or not. There is some templated parts of the
> output, but the majority is based solely on the input. It would be great
> if you could specify this in the gperf documentation, as it is rather vague
> on the issue right now (it simply includes the GPL version 2, without any
> special mention).

Thanks for the suggestion; it indeed becomes sort of an FAQ. I've added
this text to the documentation:

   gperf is under GPL, but that does not cause the output produced
   by gperf to be under GPL.  The reason is that the output contains
   only small pieces of text that come directly from gperf's source
   code -- only about 7 lines long, too small for being significant --,
   and therefore the output is not a "derivative work" of gperf (in the
   sense of U.S.@: copyright law).

   On the other hand, the output produced by gperf contains essentially
   all of the input file.  Therefore the output is under the same license, with
   the same copyright holder, as the input that was passed to gperf.

Bruno