On Friday 31 August 2007, Piermaria Maraziti wrote:
At 01.50 31/08/2007, you wrote:
The difference here could be that these are compiled programs and DLLs... could be different legalese than a script lang like PHP.
It is a fairly small difference to me. An API is an API and the fact that it is compiled in a DLL or scripted, apart from the visibility of code has no real philosophical or legalese difference. #include in a scripting language or dll loading instructions in C/C++/Delphi are, semantically, equivalent and the difference that in the first case PHP will parse & tokenize the non-GPL'ed script on the fly while the DLL was compiled away and given as-is is a minor one.
Please, if you tell me I'm "completely wrong" at least have the kindness of saying me why. Thanks. :-)
Actually there is a legal difference between "statically linked" and "dynamically linked" (DLL) code. That's why the GPL and LGPL exist as two separate licenses. Of course, that predates the concept of powerful interpreted languages (PHP), "everything is dynamic by design" languages (Java), etc. I don't know off hand if that distinction has been tested in court yet in interpreted languages (but lots of LGPLed code exists for in PHP, like Smarty, so it seems the common wisdom is that it's OK, rightly or wrongly.) -- Larry Garfield AIM: LOLG42 larry@garfieldtech.com ICQ: 6817012 "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it." -- Thomas Jefferson