Hello, On 07/29/2002 05:29 PM, Chris Boget wrote: > If someone is going to be using scripts that they grabbed > from a public forum (PHP Builder, PHPClasses, etc) in a > commercial product (that is going to be compiled with the > Zend encoder and released), what is the protocol, if any? > Do you have to get permission from the author or anything?
If a explicit license is not specified, yes. If the license does not permit what you want to do, like for instance GPL, you may try asking the author as well. Anyway, by popular demand, some time ago I added the possibility for authors specify the license they want they code to be made available in the PHP Classes site. You may want to notice in a specific License field in the classes' pages. Not all authors bothered to specify their code license. Therefore, some time later I am going to mark the classes without a specific license as NOT BEING MAINTAINED precisely because many people like yourself really need to know. > I've read a bit of the GNU Public liscence but I didn't come > away knowing any more than went I started reading it. So > I figure I'd ask here where I'm sure many of you have this > type of experience. Yes, I am afraid that regarding GPL I have to agree with Microsoft when they say it is a cancer. The problem is that if you want to distribute something that incorporates GPL licensed components, your software also needs to be distributed as GPL and so it gets contaminated. This means that you can't sell your closed source software if you incorporate GPL components. Most people are really not aware of this but because some important software like Linux and even MySQL use GPL and so many developers use it without even being aware of the actual license implications (if they have read the license at all). I guess Stallman knew that most people would not read or understand the licenses or else many of them would not be adopting GPL as in fact GPL based Free as in Stallman free is more restrictive than most people intended their Open Source software to be. Usually I do not recommend GPL at all unless you are aware of what it means and that is what you really want it. Usually I recommend BSD license or similar like Apache or even PHP license. -- Regards, Manuel Lemos -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
