Re: GPL violation? (Was: v1.6 Enhanced SNACC Freeware)

On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 08:47:31PM +0000, Andrew Marlow wrote:
> I hope that eSNACC can continue, maybe under the LGPL.
> After all, it seems to me that it is a bit like using GCC on a
> commercial project. GCC makes special provision (IIRC) for
> projects that compile with GCC such that they are not
> considered to be deriative works. Maybe we need something
> similar so that people can compile and parse ASN.1 without
> their program being considered a derivate work. Then eSNACC

As far as I know, the original authors of SNACC allowed
always, that SNACC can be used for everything, including
closed source.  I.e. they have a similar licensing as bison.
While the ASN.1 compiler is GPL, the generated code is not
"viral".  In snacc.tex it is made clear:

"This program, Snacc, is free software; you can redistribute
it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any
later version.

The runtime libraries are copyright to the University of
British Columbia and Michael Sample.  They are free
software; you can redistribute them and/or modify them as
long as the original, unmodified copyright information
with/in them.  The GNU Library Public License has been
removed as of version 1.1."

The next paragraph says:

"What we're trying to say is: you can't sell the compiler
but you can sell products that use the code generated by the
compiler and the runtime libraries."

Which is nonsense, because nobody prohibits selling of GPL
software.

Cheers,
-- 
W. Borgert <[email protected]>