I think people here should be more objective when judging on different issues... -When someone asks which directory one should submit to, don't refer him to your friends directories, when those directories are not worth it. - When he asks about the best directory script, don't refer him to the one of your friend or that you develop mod or templates to, refer to the best or at least tell him that you are familiar with just one... stating that someone here is the owner of the idea of deep links is just stupid. I submitted to the msn directory two years ago, before they closed it, and I submitted deeplinks, so many other directories do the same. So implementing the idea for this script, phpld, doesn't give you any right on it. As long as nobody copies your code, they are no ripper. my 2cents.
AV is a SE, so is google. You could say Google innovated in the way searches, indexing and crawls are performed though. But Wandex came before them. They're all still SEs. Maybe you're now coming around to understanding the OP and the rest of us. Improve, innovate and release under your own brand (no-one else is going to claim to be anon or even suggested that's what they want to do). Check out Photoshop (to name a big brand)... you'll find several plugins to do the same thing (both free and paid). It's no different to someone releasing an alternative modification for adding extra links to phpLD. It's legal and at this time the licensing does not restrict it.
Code it all yourself, and your good to go. I strongly advise against getting someone elses hard-worked-on script and just "changing" the variable names and now it's yours. Anything you program yourself is yours. No one can take that away from you but the second you take someone else's script... you are crossing the line. You said you know PHP - just make your own from scratch and your fine
to add to ccoonen,if you want you same script to be successful than always try to increase the functionality than the prevoius one.