This is Debian/GNU Linux's prepackaged version of the FSF's GNU bc and
dc utility.  bc is an interactive algebraic language with arbitrary
precision.  dc is a reverse-polish desk calculator which supports
unlimited precision arithmetic.

bc was previously maintained by Bill Mitchell and Austin Donnelly.
The current package was put together by me, James Troup
<jjtroup@comp.brad.ac.uk>, from the GNU sources, which I obtained from
src.doc.ic.ac.uk:/pub/gnu/bc-1.04.tar.gz.  The changes were small :-

o adding support for the Debian package maintenance scheme, by adding
  various debian/* files.  
o configure.in: altered to use ncurses in preference to termcap if
  it's available when linking with libreadline.
o bc/scan.l: don't use readline when not interactive. (Andreas Schwab)
o lib/number.c: fix broken sqrt function. (Phil Nelson)
o Test/timetest: correct location of bc. (Karl Heuer)

bc was written by Phil Nelson, Ken Pizzini wrote dc.

Program Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1997 Free Software
Foundation, Inc.  
Modifications for Debian Copyright (C) 1997, 1998 James Troup.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License with
your Debian GNU/Linux system, in /usr/doc/copyright/GPL, or with the
Debian GNU/Linux bc source package as the file COPYING.  If not,
write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite
330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

Manual (dc.info) Copyright (C) 1984 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
preserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
permission notice identical to this one.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this
manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified
versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a
translation approved by the Foundation.