Lua and GNU readline linking

[Lefteris Chatzibarbas <lefcha@...>]

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.

Also, IIRC from related discussions about GPL'd libraries (and
especially GNU readline), the violation takes place when one distributes
the linked software (Lua + GNU readline), and at least Debian GNU/Linux,
seems to currently distribute packages of Lua 5.1 that link to GNU
readline.

I hope someone will prove me wrong, because readline support in the
interpreter is quite useful, and it would surely be nice to be able to
inherit this support (like lua_readline() I think tries to do).

Regards,
Lefteris Chatzibarbas

PS. May I suggest to use NetBSD's libedit (editline and history
library), which is BSD licensed, and also has readline emulation?


[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfLibraryIsGPL