On Tue, Oct 23, 2001 at 05:35:14PM +0200, Bruno BORGHI wrote:

Hello,

Is there any documentation somewhere on the impact of the mixing of licenses between ZPL and GPL, for a Zope site ?

For instance, suppose I develop for a customer a business application with Zope (ZPL) and MetaPublisher (MPL - Mozilla) , and that a very independant part of the application is just having Zwikis (GPL) for ordinar use without modification. What does apply to my application itself ? My understanding is that my application is not GPLed if it does not rely specifically on a GPL module. Do you agree ?

And what about GPL Python modules ? Python being an interpreted language, what is the impact of a GPL python module over the general license issue ? More. MySQLdb has a choice of license between GPL and the original license based on Python 1.5.2's license. It has a C module _mysql.c that is linked with the Python executable. What would be the status of my application using Zope and MySQLdb, if the only choice was GPL for _mysql.c ?

Although it is not of paramount importance, this license issue worry customers for which we develop applications, even if they do not plan to redistribute the application. I would like to give an answer that is generally accepted in the Zope community.

Thanks, Bruno Borghi http://www.akeirou.com

This is somewhat controversial -- largely due to how "linking" is to be interpreted and whether it occurs at all. See http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-dev/2001-June/thread.html#11792 Thread is "http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-dev/2001-June/thread.html#11792"

From the archives at lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-dev/2001-June/011881.html

------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 16:43:05 -0600 (MDT) From: Richard Stallman <rms@NO-SPAM.gnu.org> To: morten@NO-SPAM.thingamy.net Subject: Re: Mixing different licences Another question is whether or not it's legal to use GPL-ed Zope products with Zope. That is a hard question. I don't know whether Zope is just an interpreter or contains facilities that, in effect, the user program links with. It makes a difference. If the former, you can run programs on Zope regardless of their licenses. If the latter, then in general, you can't take someone's GPL-covered code and combine it with Zope, because the Zope license is GPL-incompatible. If someone wrote a GPL-covered program specifically for Zope, you are pretty safe taking that as implicit permission to combine it with Zope. But it would be better for them to give explicit permission. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Also from the archives at http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-dev/2001-June/011882.html (Simon is simon@joyful.com) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Now here, I have to assume RMS is using "combine" above to mean "combine and redistribute". I hope I'm right ? If "combine" included "install zwiki on your zope installation and use it" then everything I know is wrong.. I did intend for that to be fairly danger-free. -Simon ----------------------------------------------------------------- There is a range of opinion. If I had something releasable under GPL, _I_ would intend the license to apply only to the code itself and code sub-classed from it. (note that GPL is silent on OO classing issues). fog (Federico di Gregorio) opines: "licensing a zope product under gpl is a non-sense because you won't be able to use it (usually products inherit on zope classes) and respect the gpl at the same time" [fog interprets sub-classing as equivalent to linking]. Jerome Alet has the strictest conditions I have ever seen: He allows his code to be _called_ only from GPL'd code, or as a specific condition from the Test tab. If in doubt, contact the author and/or copyright owner (who is really the only one with standing to complain) and ask. Jim Penny

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