Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!pacbell!ames!claris!apple!apple.com!desnoyer
From: desnoyer@apple.com (Peter Desnoyers)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: BISON, GCC, and the GNU public
Message-ID: <3385@internal.Apple.COM>
Date: 7 Aug 89 17:46:31 GMT
Sender: usenet@Apple.COM
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.
Lines: 24
References:<1447@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <79700024@p.cs.uiuc.edu> <5059@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>

> In article <79700024@p.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
> >The NeXT workstation's cc man page says that cc is a version of gnu_cc
> >extensively modified to support objective C.  I am hard-pressed to
> >understand how they can charge money for the NeXT workstation, when
> >the central piece of software was developed by GNU.  Isn't this
> >"selling" GNU software?

Read the license. You CAN sell GNU software. What it does mean (if I
interpret some recent postings in gnu.announce correctly) is that the
Next C compiler - source and all - will soon become freely distributable.
Market effects will make it difficult to sell in competition with free
distribution, but that is a different story entirely. 

flamers please note - this is NOT because it was built with BISON or GCC -
it is because it USES the code to GCC directly. The former case is fuzzy,
as "fair use" of a library or parser skeleton is rather broad. "Fair use"
of the code to a compiler is pretty narrow - I would think it would be
limited pretty much to archiving and fixing bugs. 

                                      Peter Desnoyers
                                      Apple ATG
                                      (408) 974-4469

disclaimer - I do not speak for the FSF.