AW: GnuPG with PHP

[Sterling Hughes]

On Sun, 22 Apr 2001, Ricardo Dias Marques wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 18 April 2001, Werner Koch wrote:
>
> > IIRC, PHP 3 is GPLed and than it is not a problem.
>
> Yes, according to the info available at:  http://www.php.net/license/
> PHP had a dual license: one of them was GPL; and PHP4 hasn't any
> longer the GPL license.
>
> > PHP 4 is not even free software, so there is no way to link it to
> gpg code.
>

PHP is Free software.  Its not FSF free (GPL or LGPL, but it is free
software (its under an Apache Style license).

> Well, in that same page, it is written that:
>
> " (...) Essentially, the PHP license gives you the right to use,
> distribute and modify PHP as much as you want, for both commercial and
> non-commercial use. You just have to make it clear to the user that
> what you have distributed contains PHP.  (...) You are free to
> distribute PHP source code you write freely or commercially, without
> any concern about the PHP or Zend licenses. (...) You may also package
> PHP as a whole with your commercial applications as much as you want.
> You just can't build commercial applications that use the Zend
> scriping engine library directly."
>
> And then it goes like this:
>
> "[1] You should be aware of the Zend license in two cases. First, if
> you publish patches to the Zend scriping engine library. The Zend
> license allows Zend Technologies, Ltd. to use those patches
> royalty-free (see the license for exact details)".
> "[2] Second, the license prevents commercial use of the Zend scriping
> engine library to build commercial applications. "
>
> I think these two are acceptable for gnuPG, since gnuPG is
> non-commercial software. Am I right?  This is NOT intended as a flame:
> I am just trying to gain some understanding of the reasons that avoid
> gnuPG to link code to PHP4.
>
>

Well, actually if GPG is under the GPL (and no other license, if its LGPL
than it would be ok), it would not be allowed for PHP to link against GPG
(exec'ing and picking up the results from a PHP script, is to my knowledge, perfectly
legal).  This is because the current PHP license is not compatible with
GPL.

> By the way, I am _not_ affiliated with PHP / Zend / gnuPG /whatever...
> I am just a happy developer of PHP scripts (_not_ PHP source code
> itself, possibly written in C) and I also am a happy user of gnuPG  :)
>

It is written in C.

-Sterling