Re: Licensing of the .output debug file

[Carl Cerecke]

Akim Demaille wrote:
>  Carl> What license covers the .output file generated by using
>  Carl> the -v flag?
>
>  Carl> I have written a parser generator which uses this output
>  Carl> file (to create a GLR parser in java). I didn't bother to
>  Carl> write my own LALR(1) parsing automata generator because
>  Carl> of time constraints on the project that needed the resulting
>  Carl> parser, and the fact that bison already has done the job
>  Carl> well.
>
>  Carl> What then, are the license ramifications for my parser generator
>  Carl> and for the code it produces?

Answering my own question here (after thinking about it for a bit).

Because we do not distribute the parser generator (it's only used
in-house), whether it inherits the GPL or not is irrelevant.

The generated parser (which is what we would distribute), doesn't
need to inherit the license of the parser generator, only the
skeleton/boilerplate code, which can have a different license
than the parser generator (like in bison).

Is that correct?

> Why don't you submit a GLR skeleton for Java in Bison?
>

It is quite different from bison. It was written for a specific
project at my work where we had to parse a complicated and
ambiguous grammar. As such, it is tailored somewhat to the
language it was designed to create a parser for. In particular,
actions can't be associated with grammar rules. An AST is
built instead with multiple subtrees for ambiguities.
Actually, identical sections of ambiguous subtrees are usually
shared, so it's a digraph, not a tree.

In any case, work owns it and they aren't likely to release
it as GPL at this stage.

I could do a Java skeleton in my own time, if I had any time
to spare (not likely this side of Christmas.)

Cheers,
Carl