PostgreSQL, OpenSSL, and the GPL

Posted Feb 17, 2011 10:22 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596)
In reply to: PostgreSQL, OpenSSL, and the GPL by vonbrand
Parent article: PostgreSQL, OpenSSL, and the GPL

Wouldn't that make libedit a derivative of readline?

MySQL AB formerly claimed that re-implementing libmysql's interface would create a derived work. They also used to claim that writing another SQL server that implemented the MySQL protocol would do the same!

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PostgreSQL, OpenSSL, and the GPL

Posted Feb 17, 2011 16:13 UTC (Thu) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

Anything that's "purely functional" -- e.g., it's the only possible way to accomplish something, like talk to a MySQL server -- is by definition not covered by copyright. What that means in particular cases is not always obvious...

There's a plausible argument that the existence of libedit means that psql *per se* is not a derived work of readline. But that doesn't matter for people who are shipping psql+readline compiled together -- that combination is *clearly* a derived work of both.