Re: Legal solution: RE: [PHP-DEV] Non-GPL readline

At 01:13 16/1/2001, Hartmut Holzgraefe wrote:

i still cannot agree here (from my legal understanding) as long as readline is the only thing to implement this interface the readline extension clearly qualifies as derivated work as it is in this case without doubt ment to be working with and only with readline and useless without it

Compatible work is not deriviative work. Nobody can tell me that my source code must not be compatible with one library or another. If I actually *use* this library, then and only then, am I violating the license. From a legal basis, Stallman has no basis. From a moral one (in a twisted way, though) - he does.

i agree that if the BSD stuff is compatible with the GNU readline lib at the source level (prototypes and such) this would be different unless one distributes binaries

That alone 'proves' that Stallman's claim has no legal basis. Nobody can convince me that from a legal standpoint, I mustn't distribute source that is compatible with a GPL library, unless there is another library that has the same API. At any rate, since we all agree on the bottom line (we should accept Stallman's request to remove readline compatibility), I'm not sure it's worth to argue about it. Zeev -- Zeev Suraski <zeev@zend.com> CTO & co-founder, Zend Technologies Ltd. http://www.zend.com/