On 08/31/2017 02:53 PM, Sandro Mani wrote:
Hi
While reviewing mingw-cfitsio, we encountered the situation of bison parser sources [1][2] containing the following:
/* [... standard GPLv3+ header ...] */
/* 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. Alternatively, if you modify or redistribute the parser skeleton itself, you may (at your option) remove this special exception, which will cause the skeleton and the resulting Bison output files to be licensed under the GNU General Public License without this special exception.
This special exception was added by the Free Software Foundation in version 2.2 of Bison. */
cfitsio is licensed MIT. Is my understanding correct that this special exception means that these files are also MIT licensed, being distributed as part of cfitsio, and hence that the license field of the package only needs to specify MIT?
Yes. You may use the bison parser skeleton code under any license terms you wish, assuming cfitsio is not a parser generator (which it does not appear to be).
~tom