yacc: public domain? (flame on)

John Chambers jc at mit-athena.ARPA
Fri Jan 25 01:18:08 AEST 1985


Hey, haven't we sorta lost track of the original question here?  As 
I understand it, there is a suggestion that code produced by yacc
belongs to AT&T or Bell Labs or somebody like that.  Exactly which 
corporate entity is named isn't the important question.  The important
question is: If I write a program using yacc (or lex), and it turns
out to be a best-seller, can AT&T or some other corporate clone come
along and claim all my royalties for their own coffers?

Until this is settled, I don't think I'll use yacc or lex.  In fact,
maybe I shouldn't even be using any high-level language.  How do I
know that the output of the C compiler isn't the legal property of
the compiler's author?

Hey, anyone out there know the real legal situation?  This is not a
frivolous question.  We're talking about us little guys having to
give up all rights to our creation because we happened to use some
corporation's tool to produce it.

				John Chambers



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