Re: [Question]:Question about bison adding GPL copyright to the parser files generated by bison and yacc.c
Hans Åberg <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.parsers.bison.general |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
> On 26 Jan 2019, at 21:48, Christian Schoenebeck <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Samstag, 26. Januar 2019 14:31:06 CET Hans Åberg wrote: >>> On 21 Jan 2019, at 17:24, bird bravo <[email protected]> wrote: >>> I noticed that when I use bison and the parser skeleton(yacc.c) to >>> >>> generate a parser file... there will be a copyright notice to claim the >>> file is a GPLV3 and an exception declaration... I wanna know is that OK to >>> use and distribute the parser file as I wish.. >> >> Yes, see [1]. The copyright applies to the skeleton code which is copied >> over to the generated parser, but there is an exception added for that. >> >> 1. https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Conditions.html > > No, that's not what the exception sais. The exception applies (and hence the > freedom to distribute a Bison generated parser under any arbitrary, different > license than GPL) only if the generated parser is not itself a parser > generator. This is not as obvious as you might think. It really depends on > what his generated parser is capable to do. From a legal point of view, copyright applies to the code in the skeleton file, as the other part is considered machine generated, like in an editor, and not copyrightable. > I give you a simple example: let's say you used Bison to develop a tool which > converts source code from one programming language A to B. Now you might think > this is not a parser generator. Well, it was obviously not your intention. But > now consider somebody uses that conversion tool for converting a parser > originally written in programming language A to language B. > > Right, your Bison generated conversion tool just generated a parser. A parser generator is not merely a program that generates a parser, but does so from a grammar [1]. So the intent of the exception, I think, is that you cannot use the skeleton as a part of a program like Bison, but perhaps there is the need for some clarification. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiler-compiler _______________________________________________ [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-bison