On Thu, 18 Mar 2004, Andrey Hristov wrote:
> a small licensing question. Is it only forbidden to have extensions in PECL that
> link to GPL or it's not possible at all to have PHP extensions (even not hosted
> in PECL) that link to GPL code , and there is no exception in the license of
> the code (like with mysql).

If the extension can *only* work by being linked to a GPL'ed library, then
yes, you can't do it.  If however linking to the GPL'ed library is an
optional thing and the extension can work by being linked to a non-GPL'ed
library then simply tell people to use the non-GPL'ed library and you are
fine.

The problem with an extension that has no purpose other than linking
against a GPL'ed library is that although we are not violating the GPL
because we don't distribute a binary that is already linked, we are
distributing something which encourages people to violate the GPL.
Libraries shouldn't be GPL'ed anyway.  Talk to the author and ask him/her
to switch to the LGPL at least.

-Rasmus

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