Re: Question about "Conditions for Using Bison" in Bison 2.0 documentation

[Hans Aberg]

At 10:53 +0100 2005/03/10, Sylvain Schmitz wrote:
>Paul Hilfinger wrote:
>
>> In fact, this issue did get discussed when the GLR skeleton got
>> introduced, and the language (or lack of it) is, AIR, deliberate on
>> the part of the lead maintainers at the time.  On consideration, I
>> would prefer that the same terms apply to all skeletons as now apply
>> to the C LALR(1) skeleton.  I think that there does come a point at
>> which copylefting becomes shooting oneself in the foot.
>
>This looks to me as a problem of competitive advantage: if bison was one
>of the only programs providing C++ or GLR parsers generation, it could
>be seen as a way to promote GPLed software.  It might have been true
>when these skeleton first appeared, but I don't think it is any more,
>since both commercial and open source implementations exist now.  In
>which case it seems to me that the opposite attitude is better, that is
>promote the use of bison with an unrestrictive license on the skeletons,
>and hope it will promote the use of other open source software.

One other way to view this is that the output of a copyrighted program is
rarely viewed as being covered by the copyright of the program that made it.
Take, for example, the text-files produced by a copyrighted program.

  Hans Aberg