Re: texinfo.tex licensing unclear

[Karl Berry]

    Every texinfo documentation file copies texinfo.tex into itself by
    using the TeX command "\input texinfo".

I can't answer definitively, that will have to wait for rms.  But when
extended, this logic would seem to prevent us from using TeX at all --
or virtually any other program, for that matter.

After all, when you run TeX, you're also implicitly reading plain.tex
(different license, not GPL-compatible), not to mention using the TeX
binary (different license again), and executing code out of the kernel
(yet another license).  On, let's say, a sparc-solaris system, the
kernel license is certainly incompatible with every free program.  And
yet it is obviously ok to run, say, gcc on a Sun.

    There is no bison.hairy-like exclusion for this usage that I can find.

Speaking of bison.hairy, it has no copyright statement at all in the
installed location (bison.simple does).  And the new skeletons (yacc.c,
glr.c, lalr1.c) don't have the "special exception".  This seems
problematic, I'll report it.


Regards,
karl