GPL

[piersk]

I'm planning on creating and selling a product that has quite a few pieces of software that are open source and under the GPL. However, there is also part that I'm writing myself and I don't want this to be GPL'ed. Do I actually have to make the code of the OS software available (i.e. apache is going to be present; does that mean I have to provide the source code)? How does it all work?

[MarkR]

I am not a lawyer, but I believe that if you don't actually LINK your code with a GPL product, or modify an existing GPL product, you're in the clear.

Even if you did have a patched version of a GPL product which was used by your system, you'd only be obliged to provide the source code of that patch, not the rest of your system.

Simply using a GPL program, be it an OS, compiler, server etc, does not imply that your application must be GPL.

Moreover, Apache isn't GPL so linking with that doesn't count (nor is PHP). As far as I'm aware, Apache and PHP's licences are less restrictive than the GPL.

MySQL is licenced under the GPL, but simply making application which uses it through the normal client mechanism does not imply that it's a derivative work (Although if you link with the MySQL client library, it would, but writing an application in PHP doesn't imply that).

In any case, MySQL's licencing has a special opt-out clause for PHP (If I recall correctly).

Mark

[bubblenut]

Just out of interest , why do you not want to release it under the GPL?

[piersk]

Because it's a possible business opportunity, and it's going to be fairly propriatory. I know I could try to make it open source, and I've thought about it, but I seriously can't think of a way that I could make it happen