Re: [PHP-DEV] Could some kind soul review these patches please. From: Peter Bowen (pzb <email protected>)
Date: 12/13/00

I was under the impression that it was legal for an individual to link GPL
code with code under GPL-incompatible licenses, as long as the resulting
binary isn't distributed. Therefore, is there a reason that we can't have
source code that links with GPL software, as long as we only distribute
our own source code, and don't include any GPL code?

Thanks.
Peter

On Thu, 14 Dec 2000, Zeev Suraski wrote:

> At 02:23 14/12/2000, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:
> >There are certain extensions that can't be distributed alongside PHP
> >because of license conflicts. Distributing these separately from a tree
> >without such license restrictions is the only real solution I see short of
> >dropping those extensions completely. A good example is the readline
> >extension which we will have to remove from PHP due to a license conflict.
>
> That's not true really.
> The readline extension is just as 'illegal' to distribute if you distribute
> it outside PHP. Distribution is meaningless.
>
> The fact that readline is GPL'd, and that the PHP license is incompatible
> with it, means that PHP mustn't be linked with readline, period. It says
> nothing about our ability to distribute code which is compatible with
> readline (it's impossible to prevent such a thing). The ones that are
> violating the license are the users, who actually compile the readline
> extension and link the readline library in. They'll be violating the
> license just the same if the readline extension source is inside PHP,
> inside PEAR, or just available separately on www.foo.bar.
>
> The only thing we can do about this is display a small disclaimer, warning
> people that linking the library with the GNU readline library may violate
> the GPL, and that they're doing it at their own risk. It's ultra-silly anyway.
>
> Zeev
>
> --
> Zeev Suraski <zeev <email protected>>
> CTO, Zend Technologies Ltd. http://www.zend.com/
>
>
> 

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