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

[Paul Eggert]

Paul Hilfinger <address@hidden> writes:

> 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.

Yes, that's correct.  I mentioned the y.tab.c copyright notice of
Solaris Yacc mainly to point out that it's clear that Sun is making a
copyright claim in this area.  I mentioned the Berne convention
because not every country is a signatory, and in non-signatory
countries like the Cayman Islands my analysis of what's permitted
might not be correct.


> 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

It depends on whether the produced works are "derivative works" of Y's
copyrighted programs.  For many programs (e.g., "cat") it's quite
clear that the program's output is not a derivative work of the
program.

But in the case of Yacc, it's pretty clear that the C output file is a
derivative work of both the Yacc template file and the user's source
file.  So, legally speaking, the user and Sun both have copyright
interest in the C output file, and you need permission from both
parties before you can redistribute that file.