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

[Larry Garfield]

On Friday 31 August 2007, Thomas Barregren wrote:

> Suppose you have a GPLed program A and another program B. The fact that
> A depends on B (or vice versa) is not enough to trigger the requirement
> that B also is GPLed. For an example it is perfect legal to let B be non
> GPLed if A use fork and exec and similar mechanisms to call B. A special
> case of this proviso is the "web service loophole". It is only if A uses
> a function, an object or some other internals of B, or vice versa, that
> B is required to be GPLed. Thus, for any construction where A and B can
> collaborate without knowing or assuming anything about each others
> internals, it is acceptable that B isn't GPLed.
>
> So, if you want to build a module that can be used to integrate a
> software with a license incompatible with GPL, I *believe* that a
> solution is to build a GPLed Service Provider Interface (SPI) which
> makes no assumption about the internals of the service providers.
>
> Regards,
> Thomas

So you are claiming, then, that a Drupal wrapper module for a non-GPLed system 
that communicated only via REST calls (or similar) but still had no actual 
function of its own without that non-GPLed system, is legal?

Just for the record, how many of the people in this thread actually *are* 
lawyers? :-)

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Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
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