RE: [PHP-DEV] readline extension status?

OK, been reading up on the legalities of this to see if theres any precidence set.. supprisingly nothing that I can find has seemed to make it to court but lets take our readline extension for example. According to the OST (http://www.ostel.com/whyopen.html), which has an article on drivers and compiling with the linux kernel. If we were legally in the wrong distributing code that links in to readline for example (which I dont think is the case, this is only true when distributing binaries which have the byte code in, as was previously stated) then we would be forced the separated the code from the PHP codebase and distribute it under GPL or some compatible licience and enable compiling as a shared module as default (there by not GPL code is in PHP) this is not to say we need to disable static compiling but that must be up to the end user to abuse the licience (Maybe somthing for PEAR??). Anyway not that it matters that much lets just hope we dont get too many problems on this front. James > You can't force someone not to make something that's compatible with your > software - it's outside the scope of the software license. > > #include is nothing, unless it's actually compiled against and > linked with > GPL'd code. Behind this same #include there could be a BSD > readline clone. > > Zeev > > At 15:30 28/12/2000, Stanislav Malyshev wrote: > >KK>> Writing the code is usually not the problem, but linking againt > >KK>> it can be according to the GNU party line, if I understand that > >KK>> properly. You'd not be able to distribute any precompiled > >KK>> modules or PHP binaries with such code. > > > >Since LGPL explicitly notices allowing _linking_ to protected > libraries as > >one of it's main goals, I guess GPL explicily prohibits making non-GPL > >programs that are compatible with GPL libraries - under "derived work" > >clause (You use headers, right? So it's derived work). I remember RMS > >writing about it somewhere, but don't recall the URL. Somewhere > >under "Philosophy" part of gnu.org (unfortunately, I can't reach > >www.gnu.org now, so I can look for the URL later). Yes, it seems too > >harsh, but as RMS said once, "GPL is not a Mr. Nice Guy". > >