Xref: utzoo news.admin:2984 news.sysadmin:804 comp.sources.wanted:4505 comp.sources.d:2436 comp.unix.xenix:2642 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ll-xn!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!gatech!udel!burdvax!bpa!cbmvax!vu-vlsi!mpx1!romax3b2!erik From: erik@romax3b2.UUCP (Erik Murrey) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.sysadmin,comp.sources.wanted,comp.sources.d,comp.unix.xenix Subject: Re: Please remove PD-YACC sources from your machine IMMEDIATELY Summary: trade secrets? Message-ID: <247@romax3b2.UUCP> Date: 6 Jul 88 14:48:06 GMT References: <3532@rpp386.UUCP> <135@dcs.UUCP> <235@pigs.UUCP> Followup-To: news.admin Organization: ROMAX Computer Company, Thousand Oaks, CA Lines: 26 In article <235@pigs.UUCP>, haugj@pigs.UUCP (Joe Bob Willie) writes: > In article <135@dcs.UUCP> wnp@dcs.UUCP (Wolf N. Paul) writes: > >2. If they are reacting to the name YACC, does this mean that they ARE > > moving towards considering the names of *NIX utilities their property > > which no-one else may use? If so, where does this leave such products > > as MINIX, MKS, etc.? > > no, they seem to be aiming at the source itself, or possibly the ideas > contained in the source. i'm not certain. i don't know how this will > affect unix-like utilities. it may affect clones which are not exact > source ripoffs, but say, used the exact same algorithms. for example, > a yacc clone which built a lalr(0) parser identical to the real yacc > might be more in danger than one which built a lr(0) or lr(1) parser. I remember reading a paper which was the basis of YACC's algorithms. I think it was in CACM, something like "Deterministic Parsing of Ambiguous Grammars" (I may be way off here...). It discussed disambiguating rules for shift-reduce and shift-shift confilcts, and how to incorporate them into a lalr(0) parser generator such as YACC. Wouldn't this nullify any claim for trade secrets within YACC? --- Erik Murrey erik@mpx1.UUCP ...!{bpa,vu-vlsi,cbmvax}!mpx1!erik ok, so my spelling sucks... what do you want?