Greetings,
I'm writing you because of some confusion about the licensing terms for
Bison. In particular, my understanding is that Bison output is permitted
to be incorporated into non-free programs. However, when I browse
through the source distribution of Bison, I don't find a clear statement
to that effect.
My employer requires that any use of free software in the company must
go through approval by our legal department. Generally the way this is
done is that our lawyers will download the source distribution and
examine it. If the licensing terms are not completely clear, or are in
conflict with the company's goals, then the request to use that software
package will be denied. Once the licensing terms are deemed acceptable,
the legal team will then look at the origin of the software, to
determine if the licensor is actually the legal copyright holder.
Fortunately, in the case of GNU software, this last is not an issue,
given that GNU has a formal rights clearance process. Finally, if the
software is approved, the engineers using the software are required to
strictly adhere to the licensing terms.
In the specific case of Bison, this process failed - because the
exemption for the use of Bison in non-free programs is buried in an
obscure (to a lawyer at least) place in the distribution.
Now, it may be that you don't wish to make it easy to incorporate Bison
output into non-free programs, and I respect that position. However, if
that is the case, it would be better if it were clearly stated. If, on
the other hand, you wish to permit the output to br used in this way, I
would also request a clearer statement of that intent.
In particular, would I would like to see is an addendum to the COPYING
file that explicitly lists any and all exemptions for any files that are
part of the Bison distribution.
Thank you for your time (and thanks for the excellent work you have been
doing)
-- Talin
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