Re: Lua and GNU readline linking

[Jamie Webb <j@...>]

On Mon, Feb 20, 2006 at 03:28:09PM +0200, Lefteris Chatzibarbas wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Lua 5.1 seems to link with GNU readline (when LUA_USE_READLINE is
> enabled).  IANAL, but I believe that this is a violation of the GPL
> license that GNU readline is published under, and Lua has to either
> change it's license to GPL [1], get a special permission from upstream
> authors/copyright holders, or stop linking with the GNU readline
> library.

Nope. When Lua is linked against readline, the /resulting binary/ must
be GPLed. The Lua sources contain no code derived from readline and so
are not affected.

Since I think only the standalone interpreter is linked against
readline, that means that Debian is shipping a GPLed lua along with an
MIT-licensed liblua. That's all above board.

-- Jamie Webb