Re: [HACKERS] Readline use in trouble?

>From GPL, section 0:

"Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
covered by this License; they are outside its scope." 

We are not copying, distributing, or modifying readline.

"The act of running the Program is not restricted, ..."

Writing
char * foo = readline("");
is the same as writing
int bar = system("/bin/gzip");
just that they chose to create their product in a way that you have to use
the former method rather than the latter.

"... and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents
constitute a work based on the Program" 

I always thunk that the output of readline is a work based on the user.

Anyway, when the BSD folks get their libedit act together, we can easily
replace one with the other. That was one of the requests by the folks out
there, and I got it done.
-Peter



On Tue, 19 Oct 1999, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> Here is something I read as part of the Alladin Ghostscript 6.0 beta
> release.  I must admit I don't understand the logic of the issue.  It
> seems the issue is that you can link non-GPL to GPL libraries, but you
> can't distribute the result.   Maybe it doesn't apply to us because we
> don't copyright our code.
> 
> It seems to suggest that we could be prevented from distributing
> readline in the future.  Not sure though.
> 
> It sounds like the old US crypto restriction where you couldn't
> distribute software that had hooks in it to add crypto.
> 
> Removal of readline would certainly affect psql users.


-- 
Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders vaeg 10:115
peter_e@gmx.net                   75262 Uppsala
http://yi.org/peter-e/            Sweden