Message-ID: <bnews.tekmdp.1773>
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!CAD:tektronix!tekmdp!laurir
X-Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!CAD:tektronix!tekmdp!laurir
From: tekmdp!laurir
Date: Sun Feb 13 07:24:41 1983
Subject: using YACC to generate commercial products - AT&T speaks
Posted: Fri Feb 11 17:42:57 1983
Received: Sun Feb 13 07:24:41 1983

Long time followers of this news group may recall that last April
I queried as to the legality of using YACC to generate a compiler
which would then be sold to customers who do not necessarily have
Unix licenses.  The problem is that YACC includes a 150-line file,
/usr/lib/yaccpar, in the generated compiler, and so one might construe
the result to be "derived" from Unix in the sense of the copyright
act and/or the Unix license.
  I heard today from the AT&T licensing folks, and they do in fact
consider output from YACC to be part of Unix.  There is at least
one company making its money by selling such a compiler; they run
the C code from yacc through a cross compiler to get a compiler
for a machine which cannot run Unix.  The implication then is that
a Unix binary license must be purchased for this non-Unix
machine before the generated compiler can be run on it.
  -- Andrew Klossner (decvax!tektronix!tekmdp!laurir)