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

[Larry Garfield]

On Friday 31 August 2007, Ken Rickard wrote:
> Jeff-
>
> Two questions, mercifully brief, for all:
>
> 1) Should we escalate this to the Drupal Association to pull in some
> lawyerly resources?
>
> I presume the answer is "no" here, as I hear killes in my head saying
> "Drupal follows GPL; end of discussion."

That depends what is being asked of the lawyers.  "How can we tweak our 
licensing policy" is probably not going to get very far at all, lawyers or 
not.  "Would we be breaking the law to host in CVS a module that does X" 
would be a question best asked of a lawyer, and I agree that the DA would 
probably be the correct party to ask.  (FSF has lawyers who will give us 
answers, as Jeff has found, but they are not exactly an unbiased source.  And 
I say that as a card-carrying FSF Associate Member.)

> 2)  How does this affect Edison Wong's (and many others') work on Oracle /
> DB2 integration for Drupal core?  Can GPL software invoke data directly
> from a non-GPL storage system?
>
> - Ken

IANAL etc., but since the communication with the server is all via SQL, which 
is a (nominal) standard, I'd think it would be no more problematic than 
Aggregator, which pulls RSS feeds from both GPLed blogs and proprietary 
newspaper sites.  


-- 
Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
larry at 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