Ron Natalie <ron@BRL-TGR> (01/17/85)
It's amazing how out of hand this gets. This all started because someone wanted to know whether the output of YACC contains proprietary code in it. Chances are that by Trade Secret law the answer is no. If you don't use the provided parser, the answer is certainly no. Verdict: If you're worried use your own parser or one provided for the public domain by the Software Tools group. Just because some aspect of UNIX isn't secret anymore doesn't give you the right to steal the source and use it. Perhaps the operation of UNIX isn't secret anymore. The manuals are available anywhere and AT&T does not discourage people from talking about it (some vendors like UNIVAC require people to be bound by the proprietary agreements at conferences). AT&T doesn't seem to be interested in challenging this. IDRIS, COHERENT, etc... are examples of people who use the public knowledge of what UNIX does to make their own compatilbe product. The source code (how it does it) is a different matter however. AT&T still enforces secrecy agreements on the source code and descriptions on how the source code operates. -Ron