Question regarding modules/pluggins license?

[Tony Linde]

How can writing to an API force you to conform to that product's license? If
that was the case, a Java app running on Windows would be illegal and on
Linux would have to be GPLed.

Tony.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Lance Taylor [mailto:ian at airs.com] 
> Sent: 01 March 2004 14:35
> To: Larry Masters
> Cc: license-discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: Re: Question regarding modules/pluggins license?
> 
> Larry Masters <lmasters at nextco.net> writes:
> 
> > I currently work on an open source project that uses the GPL for a 
> > license. The project is written in PHP and uses 
> modules/pluggins. The 
> > project has an API  that other developers can use to create these 
> > modules/pluggins so they work within the framework of the project. 
> > Questions and many comments have been raised as to how the 
> > modules/pluggins have to be licensed. Some feel that since they use 
> > the published API that they have to be GPL. Others feel 
> that they can 
> > be licensed however the developer chooses be it a open 
> source license 
> > or a "closed source" license.
> 
> The best approach is certainly for you, the core developers, 
> to decide which you want to be true, and to spell that out 
> explicitly in the documentation.
> 
> In the general case, there are more or less convincing 
> arguments on both sides.  I don't think that anybody can 
> definitively say which is correct, because it hinges on the 
> definition of when one piece of software is a derived work of 
> another, which is not a settled legal question.
> 
> Ian
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