[development] Modules that integrate non-GPL PHP apps violate theGPL.

[Gerhard Killesreiter]

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Eric Tucker schrieb:
> Going high level ...
> 
> There are commercial enterprises now and probably more so in the future who want to build sophisticated sites with proprietary features and would love to use Drupal as their base platform.
> Also, there are existing products/services that people want to integrate with Drupal.  Modifications and improvements to the Drupal core, core modules, or contrib modules under GPL can be necessary and will be thus be contributed to the community.
> 
> However, it is unreasonable to expect companies who have proprietary algorithms in custom modules or even want to integrate with a third party API (or perhaps Google's nifty search-in-a-box) to let a CMS licensing constraint hold them back.  Thus, these companies will turn away from Drupal if licensing does not permit it.

Hehe, you seem to miss the importance of the stuff Jeff posted. This is
not a Drupal issue. It is an issue for all GPLed CMSes using PHP, Perl,
Python, whatever.

So your companies are then welcome to develop their own CMSes or buy one
that already exists.

> Not that many years ago, companies like IBM contributed massive resources to move Linux into an enterprise-ready product and subsequently built a big consulting business around it. 
> Linux was already very good.  These companies helped make it fantastic.
 The world got a solid, very scalable, very versatile operating system.

I've been using Linux before IBM "endorsed" it and I don't think big
blue's engagement did help /that/ much.

> What's more, IBM actively promotes the use of all kinds of open source software.
> Solutions they sell to their customers run a mix of open source and proprietary and/or custom developed systems.
> And of course the end motivation is profit, but the benefit to the community is immense.

I think the community could do fine without IBM. Far better than IBM
without the community, at least.

> I don't think it's a big leap to say that a CMS is not merely a single software product but will increasingly become more akin to an operating system.

> Ideally, every piece of code for a site somehow sits somewhere in that CMS.  The CMS ties everything together.  It's the kernel and the glue.
> The database is like the hard drive.  The web server is like the CPU.
> 
> If Oracle could never install their database product on Linux, would they use Linux?

No. But who'd care?

>  If a hot new site wants to build or integrate a proprietary map API, would they use Drupal?

This isn't a question of yes or no. This is a question of "how". XML-RPC
and similar stuff is still allowed.

> I am all for a GPL-like license for the core, but I believe the long term interest of the Drupal project is best served by ensuring that third party modules can be developed with their authors choosing the license that is best for them much like developing an app that happens to run on an operating system.

Nope, sorry. Drupal has a license. And what would be using a license at
all if we wouldn't stick by its terms? Even if we (including myself)
interpreted these terms slightly different.

> Let's make sure that the ability to build third party modules under any license stays that way.

This ability has never existed. It has been a long standing agreement
(or at least nobody dared to challenge this position of mine) that
modules have to be GPLed. What is "new" or rather "was unknown" so far
is that intergrating third party non-GPL software through bridge modules
is problematic too.

Cheers,
	Gerhard
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