yacc: public domain?

[Andrew Klossner]

[]

	"I have heard the claim (and it makes sense to me) that SOURCE
	code put out by yacc is proprietary, since it contains
	/usr/lib/yaccpar.  I've never heard it claimed (but wouldn't be
	TOO surprised at ANYTHING AT&T does) that object code produced
	with the aid of yacc is proprietary."

In 1982, it was the official legal position of AT&T that object code
from yacc is proprietary.

I checked into this because the company I was working for was
considering OEM'ing the Aztec C package for CP/M-80.  The problem is
that the included assembler (but not the compiler) was written using
yacc.  We concluded that Manx was violating a Unix license, and decided
to steer clear.

You can make your yacc output be non-proprietary by rewriting
/usr/lib/yaccpar.

  -- Andrew Klossner   (decvax!tektronix!orca!andrew)       [UUCP]
                       (orca!andrew.tektronix at csnet-relay)  [ARPA]