Re: [PHP4BETA] License concerns
On Tue, 20 Jul 1999, Zeev Suraski wrote:
> At 05:37 PM 7/20/99 +0200, Sascha Schumann wrote:
> >There are some concerns expressed in the slashdot discussion
> >forum about the new license scheme.
> >
> >One AC writes
> >
> >---------------------------------------------------------------
> >I'm using PHP3 (and liking it very much), and some of the new
> >PHP4 OO features sound very nice and really useful. But unless
> >PHP4 may also be used under the terms of the traditional GNU GPL,
> >I can no longer use GDBM with PHP (which I also do a lot).
> >---------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >GDBM is licensed under GPL, so it might be the case that linking
> >with non-GPL code (such as PHP4) is prohibited (that's what the
> >LGPL license is for).
> >
> >Which other extensions libraries are licensed under GPL?
>
> Hmm, I think that's completely baseless. Cygnus's GNU stuff doesn't link
> at runtime with KERNEL32.DLL? KERNEL32.DLL isn't opensource and definitely
> isn't GPL'd.
GPL makes exception for system libraries.
> That post made no sense at all to me. I'm not blaming that guy, since
> understanding OS licenses is really difficult, but all the same, I'm pretty
> sure he's wrong.
>
> He can link GDBM with PHP just as he can link the BC math library and any
> other GPL'd software just fine; The only thing *we* can't do is distribute
> PHP with those packages bundled. That has nothing to do with Zend's QPL by
> the way, it's like that because PHP itself is no longer GPL'd.
That means that it won't be possible to include PHP4 in linux
distributions, like Debian. Or at least, not linked against gdbm. Actually
that isn't that bad, I wanted to get rid of this gdbm dependency in the
.debs for quite a while since it is deprecated :) But this doesn't make it
a non-issue.
Greg
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