Return to BSD News archive
Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!malgudi.oar.net!caen!destroyer!ncar!noao!arizona!naucse!naucse.cse.nau.edu From: jdc@naucse.cse.nau.edu (John Campbell) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Restrictions on free UNIX / 386BSD (Re: selling 386BSD) Message-ID: <5423@naucse.cse.nau.edu> Date: 18 Aug 92 15:39:23 GMT References: <1992Aug17.225116.20533@panix.com> Sender: jdc@naucse.cse.nau.edu Lines: 20 >From article <1992Aug17.225116.20533@panix.com>, by tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon): > > I'm sorry, that's just stupid. Is this another reincarnation of the anti-FSF > propaganda line about "if you compile your code with GCC, it's covered by > copyleft!!!!"? That suggestion is patently false. The degree to which a number > of commercial software houses are frightened of the FSF is neatly displayed by > the persistence of this absurd rumor. Well, perhaps the rumor persists because of bison's and the bison.simple copyleft. I, for one, was aghast to find that a very restrictive copyleft generated by bison. (Restrictive to the point that I asked FSF what's going on and found that, yes, I could *not* use it at work without releasing all my code.) Note that Bob Corbet (bison's original author) "solved" the problem by allowing byacc (an improvement over bison) to be distributed outside the FSF channels. IMHO this addition to bison has been, and remains, frightening. PS Sorry for a non-bsd posting--except to point out that byacc is part of bsd these days.