Re: Question on licensing terms for flex- and bison-generated software

[Carl Cerecke]

JUAN ESTEBAN JARAMILLO MONSALVE wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Currently I work on a research project to enable the visualization of
> mathematics using computer graphics.
>
> I plan to use Flex and Bison to generate the lexical analyzer and
> parser (respectively) for the mathematical equations.
> Then I'd like to port these programs to C++ and integrate it with the
> rest of the project.
>
> My question is:
> Does these lexical analyzer and parser created using software released
> under the GNU General Public License are also subject to
> redistribution and/or modification under the terms of the GNU General
> Public License?

From memory:

Before bison 1.24, the code generated by bison was GPL, meaning if
you used it in any of your code, and redistrbuted that code, you also
had to license under the GPL.
From version 1.24 onwards, the code generated by bison is free of
any licensing; you can use it in code with proprietary/BSD/whatever
license.
When I say "code generated by bison", I mean the skeleton file with
the compressed tables added.

I don't know about flex.

Cheers,
Carl.