dono@killer.UUCP (09/24/87)
I seem to have inadvertantly opened a real can of worms; after I had posted the yacc code to this newsgroup I received a letter from decus, and this morning 9-24-87 I received another letter from att. They both follow; I am really confused by the whole mess and if I could pull the postings from the net I would. Sorry for taking up the net with this garbage but I feel like trying to straighten it up. Letters to me: I strongly suspect that it is proprietary to AT&T. Before you post it, I would recommend your talking with the AT&T lawyers to make sure you aren't inadvertantly publishing something you have no right to. As far as I know, there is no public-domain yacc available from Decus. If you know of a distribution, I would appreciate knowing it so the Decus library can check it out. A version of Lex written by Charles Forsythe was distributed with Decus C (11-SP-18) for which I am responsible. I do have permission from Charles to include Lex on Decus C distributions, but I don't know whether Austin Code Works (or anyone else) has permission to further distribute it. As distributed by Decus, Lex bears Charles' copyright notice. Martin Minow decvax!minow Subject: 'public domain' yacc/lex 1. Decus no longer distributes yacc/lex code on their tapes. It is AT&T Proprietary [and Copyrighted] code. We can get into a long discussion about it but I'd rather not. It was proprietary before code could be copyrighted, and only distributed to UNIX license holders. I do not know how it wound up on a DECUS tape. Since the law has changed, it has been copyrighted. In any case, even though copies [without copyright notice] abound, it still belongs to AT&T. 2. The AT&T Legal dept has been in touch with Austin Code Works [I do not know the status or details of the communication]. I believe they were asked to stop distributing AT&T code or to pay the appropiate royalties. 3. I posted a notice in comp.sources.d asking folks to check with the proper AT&T legal dept [they have an 800 number] I will attempt to retrieve a copy of the notice and the phone number so that you may verify the legal status of the code. Please refrain from posting code until you have checked first. frank pirz at&t bell labs alice!fcp