Bison COPYING confusion

[Talin]

Greetings,

I'm writing you because of some confusion about the licensing terms for 
Bison. In particular, my understanding is that Bison output is permitted 
to be incorporated into non-free programs. However, when I browse 
through the source distribution of Bison, I don't find a clear statement 
to that effect.

My employer requires that any use of free software in the company must 
go through approval by our legal department. Generally the way this is 
done is that our lawyers will download the source distribution and 
examine it. If the licensing terms are not completely clear, or are in 
conflict with the company's goals, then the request to use that software 
package will be denied. Once the licensing terms are deemed acceptable, 
the legal team will then look at the origin of the software, to 
determine if the licensor is actually the legal copyright holder. 
Fortunately, in the case of GNU software, this last is not an issue, 
given that GNU has a formal rights clearance process. Finally, if the 
software is approved, the engineers using the software are required to 
strictly adhere to the licensing terms.

In the specific case of Bison, this process failed - because the 
exemption for the use of Bison in non-free programs is buried in an 
obscure (to a lawyer at least) place in the distribution.

Now, it may be that you don't wish to make it easy to incorporate Bison 
output into non-free programs, and I respect that position. However, if 
that is the case, it would be better if it were clearly stated. If, on 
the other hand, you wish to permit the output to br used in this way, I 
would also request a clearer statement of that intent.

In particular, would I would like to see is an addendum to the COPYING 
file that explicitly lists any and all exemptions for any files that are 
part of the Bison distribution.

Thank you for your time (and thanks for the excellent work you have been 
doing)

-- Talin