[antlr-interest] [v3] Lack of documentation

[David Piepgrass]

>  >I don't understand.
>  >
>  >I've reread the sentence below many times now, and I just can't
> see
>  >how it relates in any way to price. To say "use...is permitted"
>  >implies nothing about price.
>
> Of course not.  The BSD license is all about "free as in liberty",
> not "free as in beer".
>
> In fact, it's perfectly legal and in accordance with the license
> if an up-front purchase is required to get the initial copy of the
> source and/or binary -- it's just that the receiver of said source
> is then at liberty to give it to others without charge or payment
> if they wish, or charge for it if they wish to do that too.

Right! Consequently, were the author to attempt to charge for the
source, it would quickly end up on SourceForge or FreshMeat or some
other repository as a free (as in beer, not just liberty) source
distribution. I have never seen anybody attempt to sell copies of
BSD-licensed source code as a business model. (You could sell GPL
programs too--albeit you'd have to supply the source for free if
requested by someone with the binary--and the same result would
occur.)

It's not fair to look at the matter only theoretically. Practical
reality does matter.

Theoretically I have to agree that ANTLR is 100% open-source.
Practically -- well, I certainly found it hard to use ANTLR without
the book, which the main reason I bought it -- but I wouldn't go so
far as Scott. The fact that many programs are open source, but have no
documentation whatsoever (free or otherwise), should logically imply
that ANTLR--which has more documentation than those--is indeed
open-source. Even though the book is neither open nor source.

Hmmm!

I finally realize that we're beating a dead horse. Time to move on...