A note about licenses (the GPL)

I've been talking with members of the PHP Group about the PHP/PECL policy for GPL extensions: The official word is: Our license group has determined that GPLed extensions are not eligible for consideration at this time. An extension that links to an LGPL library is fine, but an extension that links to a "regular" GPL library will cause your extension to be GPL. PHP cannot distribute the GPL stuff without risking contamination from its viral license. There is a whole load of nasty, murky, headache stuff associated with interpreting the GPL and under which circumstances it applies and how far to interpret the meaning of linkage and so on. So, we don't want it. I hope you understand. We do, however, welcome other liberal open licenses, especially BSD style licenses. Our favourite license is the PHP License (of course!) and we strongly recommend that hosted PECL extensions be licensed in this way. --Wez.