Re: Question about "Conditions for Using Bison" in Bison 2.0 documentation

[Hans Aberg]

[For some unknown reason, my email to Paul Eggert bounces.]

Paul Eggert's comment does not prove commonness :-), except perhaps in the
case of Yacc and related programs.

When I try to think about computer software in general, it always is the
principle that Paul Hilfinger indicates. If the program owner would be able
to copyright also the output from a program, it would be in practise
impossible to use such programs. (Think of rendering programs for movies,
text editors, typesetting programs, audio and DVD players, etc.)

As for the copyrighting issue itself, it rarely goes to court. Isn't there
only about one case where the GPL has been tried in court?

At 14:04 -0800 2005/03/10, Paul Hilfinger wrote:
> > Hans Aberg <address@hidden> writes:
> > 
> > > the output of a copyrighted program is rarely viewed as being
> > > covered by the copyright of the program that made it.
> > 
> > No, actually it's quite common.  For example, if I run the traditional
> > /usr/ccs/bin/yacc that is shipped with Solaris 9, the output file
> > y.tab.c contains the following lines:
> > 
> > /*
> >  * Copyright (c) 1993 by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
> >  */
> > 
> > There is no other wording granting permission to copy, so under the
> > Berne convention you have no right to copy the output file y.tab.c
> > unless you have some other agreement with Sun.
>
>Actually, I believe that the Berne convention gives no standing
>whatever to written copyright notices of this sort.  Instead, if I
>produce a copyrightable work, that work is protected by copyright
>unless I take steps to make it otherwise.  Here the issue is works
>that are produced by the operation of copyrighted software.  I don't
>know what the default status is of works produced by X's use of Y's
>copyrighted programs, but I rather suspect that such products belong
>to X unless the license granted to X by Y explicitly makes other
>provisions.
>
>Paul Hilfinger
>
>
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