GPL3 source code in xorg-server-1.6.1.901 (or not)

[Jon TURNEY]

Thomas Dickey wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Jun 2009, olafBuddenhagen-hi6Y0CQ0nG0 at public.gmane.org wrote:
> 
>>> That wording could, for example, be construed to prohibit using the
>>> skeleton in an application that generates parsers from a meta
>>> description for xkb and the like.
>> Not really. Such a generator would just create .y files as well, not use
>> the Bison skeleton directly.
> 
> Perhaps the program you have in mind is that simple, but I wasn't
> talking about a trivial case.
> 
>> The point is that the skeleton is part of a generated file, and as long
>> as it is used as such, there are no restrictions. Ordinary GPL terms
>> would apply only if you took the skeleton from the generated file, and
>> used it for something else -- why would you want to do that?
> 
> One point to be made is that the source which was added to the tree
> has additional restrictions which do not apply to other files.

I'm not sure I see where this additional restriction comes from, because...

> As a special exception, you may create a larger work that contains
>     part or all of the Bison parser skeleton and distribute that work
>     under terms of your choice, so long as that work isn't itself a
>     parser generator using the skeleton or a modified version thereof
>     as a parser skeleton.

The larger work (the X server) isn't a parser generator, and so can be 
distributed under the chosen terms (X11 license)

> (The other point is questioning whether there was a technical reason for 
> the use of bison - perhaps not)

We are entirely at the mercy of what autoconf decides to use for yacc on the 
machine where 'make dist' is done.  And in this case I suspect that yacc was 
just a wrapper for 'bison -y'.