Re: [HACKERS] GNU readline and BSD license

[Alex Pilosov]

On Sat, 23 Dec 2000, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> Rasmus Lerdorf, the big PHP developer, told me that the existance of GNU
> readline hooks in our source tree could cause RMS/GNU to force us to a
> GNU license.
> 
> Obviously, we could remove readline hooks and ship a BSD line editing
> library, but does this make any sense to you?  It doesn't make sense to
> me, but he was quite certain.
Unfortunately he's right, since GPL software is incompatible with any
non-GPL software. Stallman publically admitted that he intentionally
released readline under GPL, not LGPL, to force more people into GPLing
their code.