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Re: IRAF component relicensed



Justin Pryzby wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 19, 2004 at 08:59:06PM -0800, Josh Triplett wrote:
>>Justin Pryzby wrote:
>>>What kind of license is associated with code produced by Yacc?
>>Presuming this modified yacc isn't trivially replaceable with a Free
>>yacc, this would prevent these packages from being uploadable to main.
> 
> I was afraid you'd say that.  I wouldn't know what changes to make to
> a Free yacc without looking at a (nonfree) diff between IRAF's xyacc
> and UNIX yacc..

Right; to do such reimplementation safely typically requires one person
to read the non-free source and document, and another person who has
never seen the non-free source to implement the Free version based on
the documentation.

> Normal compilation won't require rebuilding this file (as in, I never
> noticed before I considered the nonfreeness and checked).  What about
> contrib?  "Depends on non-free component to build" (from true source).

No, because the yacc output itself contains portions of the non-free
UNIX yacc code (specifically, the parser).

One suggestion: you might be able to make the necessary modifications to
BSD yacc, which I think descends from the original UNIX yacc by way of
BSD UNIX and the whole AT&T vs. BSD issue.  Unless it has been
drastically rewritten, its internal structure is probably far closer to
what the IRAF team used as a basis for their modified yacc.

- Josh Triplett

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