george@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (George R. Boyce) (05/21/86)
In article <2633@teddy.UUCP> jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson) writes: > >I recently obtained a copy of BISON (the GNU yacc equivalent). It appears >that every C file genrated by BISON contains the GNU copyright. I contacted >Richard Stallman to make sure this was not accidental - his reply was that >this copyright was included in the generated C source file because it includes >a copy of the parser written by him. To the best of my understanding, this >implies that I cannot sell any program that uses BISON to generate a parser >- In fact, I must be willing to give away that C source. > It is not all that unusual that a company (1) prohibit you from using a product for comercial gain and/or (2) charge you a royalty fee when you sell a product produced by their product. These actions are almost always taken to protect the commercial value of the first company's product. RMS takes a slightly different approach and for an entirely different reason. I suggest that if you think you didn't get your money's worth that you should ask for your money back. I'm sure that RMS will refund your license fee :-).