On Sun, Aug 25, 2002 at 09:24:25PM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote: > Le dim 25/08/2002 à 21:20, Jeff Licquia a écrit : > > To be clearer: let's say libmysqlclient is GPLed (I don't know for > > sure), and Python has a GPL-compatible license (which it does as far as > > I can tell). Now, let's assume a proprietary program named "foo", > > written in Python. > > Granted all this, it's legal to write Python bindings for libmysqlclient > > and distribute them. It's also legal to write and distribute foo (under > > the limitations of its license and Python's, of course); the mere > > existence of libmysqlclient bindings doesn't affect foo's status. > All right. The libmysqlclient package is indeed GPL'ed. > > However, if foo does this: > > import mysqlclient > > (or whatever the name of the binding is), then things change. It's > > still legal for foo to do this (again, assuming the license of foo > > allows it). However, it is no longer legal for anyone, including the > > original author of foo, to distribute foo. > That is exactly the case I know (excepted that it is written in PHP). It > is distributed (or it will soon be), and I don't think the author has a > MySQL license. PHP itself does not have a GPL-compatible license, so if it's true that libmysqlclient is licensed only under the GPL, we cannot distribute php4-mysql at all. However, I would be surprised if this is truly the case; given how often PHP and MySQL are used together, I would expect that someone would have noticed this problem by now. Rather, I suspect that the copyright file for the libmysqlclient package is inaccurate. In fact, a quick glance at /usr/include/mysql/mysql.h on my system shows that this file is distributed under the LGPL. Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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