Re: The GPL and you
On Sun, 31 Aug 2003, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 31, 2003 at 01:51:13PM -0700, Daniel Isacc Walker wrote:
>
> > I made a PHP extension for the talkfilters library. It's not a big
> > achievement, it's maybe 100-200 lines of code .. I've run into a license
> > problem . PHP is under the PHP license and the talkfilters library is
> > under the GPL . What this means is that my software is automatically GPL'd
> > even though it has no GPL'd source in it. The GPL doesn't distinguish
> > between linking and directly copying and pasting source code, or at least
> > not from my perspective.
>
> > That's fine with me, I'm not concerned about this software's
> > license. The problem is that , with my understanding, because my code gets
> > incorporated directly into PHP that means that PHP automatically becomes
> > GPL'd. Even if I made some kind of external module for PHP, PHP would
> > still need to be GPL'd. Of course, PHP isn't going to switch to the GPL,
> > or it's doubtful I can convince them to.
>
> There are several other PHP extensions in circulation that use GPLed
> libraries, some of them distributed with the PHP source itself. (The
> readline extension is one example.) Binaries for these modules can't be
> distributed in Debian, but that doesn't mean you can't write a PHP
> extension for a GPL library and distribute it on your own.
I use talkfilters data structures and API in my code. Is
that a derivate work? Everything else I've read indicates that it isn't..
Daniel Walker
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