Re[2]: Bison licensing issues

[Oleg Smolsky]

Hello Paul,

Paul Hilfinger wrote on 1/12/2005 at 5:24 p.m.:
> Amongst the Bison maintainers, I would again like to raise the issue
> of whether other skeletons (GLR in particular) should have the same
> terms as the default output. My feeling is that they should, and
> that placing Bison output (as opposed to Bison itself) under the GPL
> is undesirable.
Yes, IMHO, it would make a lot of sense to separate bison's source
code from that stuff it emits as far as licensing goes. Of course, the
emitted data is C/C++ code based on a skeleton, but it's not really a
part of bison's own source code. I mean it is just data and is not
part of its executable image. A somewhat close analogy would be OO.org
source code and the documents/spreadsheets it produces, which, quite
often, are considered to be corporate IP.

In any case, IMHO, it would make sense to try and aid the spread of
bison, rather then impede it. I'm not trying to start a
open-source/closed-source/gnu/bsd/free/freedom flame war here, and
just suggesting, that a compromise, such as licensing bison under GPL
and its output+skeletons under BSD would aid the product's adoption.

Best regards,
Oleg.