On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 8:50 PM, Stas Malyshev <smalys...@sugarcrm.com>wrote:
> Hi! > > > I would like to react on Stat's "it's-not-our-problem" comment in > > https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=63520 > > I assume by "Stat" you mean myself, though I'm not the only one who > Yup, sorry for mangling your name, this must be a result of me installing SPSS and analyzing some data in the same time :) > expressed the same sentiment of questioning why this is submitted as a > "bug" in PHP. Assuming that, below are my thoughts on the subject (I > apologize in advance for the length). > > > > > I am very sad to see a core developer take such a passive-aggressive > stance > > against distributions' problems. My wild guess would be that most of the > > users use the PHP in the pre-packaged form. Thus we really need to work > > together and not fight against each other even though the set of the > > problems (and their solutions) each party solves is different. > > I assure you that by raising this question I meant no aggression or > animosity toward anybody, but I do have a question of priorities here. Ok, point taken. Sorry for jumping to conclusions to early. > I understand that Debian has certain ideological guidelines which preclude > them from distributing certain software that does not fit their views on > how software should be licensed. Even though as far as I know Debian has > "non-free" area in which they distribute software with licenses other > than approved by Debian's guidelines, but ultimately I recognize that > the decision of what to distribute and what not is Debian's and their > alone. However, what happens in PHP project is decided by PHP developers > community and should gain consensus and acceptance in the community. > I would like to point out that it's not just the "Debian" (and other distributions) that has problem with JSON (non-free) license. If you look at the JSON presentation (link is somewhere in the FUD article) you will see the JSON author to mock IBM for giving them permission to use JSON for evil. (Also note the motivation – he did it to contribute to War on Terror, and I only can wish that it was ment as a joke, but I am afraid it wasn't. But I can never understand this whole concept anyway...) However, given all that, I think the matter would be handled better if, > before taking decisions that can influence many users of PHP that chose > to trust Debian to deliver their PHP builds, Debian would consult with > PHP community on how to handle that. I do not remember this question > being raised on PHP list and discussed there. Unfortunatelly nobody pointed out that it has to be discussed in the mailing list in the mentioned bug report. We have stated that we have a problem with JSON license and we had to solve the problem we had. > I personally found about > this decision by reading panic posts in the blogs along the line of "PHP > removes JSON support", which I do not think is the best outcome we could > hope for. I am sorry that it ended in a shitstorm by ignorant people, who are unable to _ask_ before they write bullshit, but I am not sure if we can prevent that. > I think PHP bug database is neither appropriate nor suitable > forum for discussing such things - it is meant for tracking bugs in PHP > code, e.g. mistakes made while implementing certain functionalities, and > the license of JSON code, which obviously being controversial and > causing issues for Debian, is definitely not there by any mistake and > should not be treated as "bug". It should be treated as licensing issue > and as such raised on this list and discussed and handled appropriately. > I consider the licensing issue as a bug and it's always better to track it as issue, but I get it that our views differ. > I certainly and wholeheartedly agree that we do need to work together > with distributions and that it would benefit our users. As a good start, > I would ask Debian representatives to work with PHP community within > processes accepted by the community, i.e. explain on this list why it is > impossible to distribute PHP the way it was distributed before for > years, why it is impossible to fit this code withing any "non-free" > framework Debian has, what Debian suggests to do (taking into account > this will influence wider PHP users community, many of whom, however > regrettable may it be, do not use Debian) and so on, initiating the > discussion that hopefully would come to some conclusion that would be > satisfactory to everyone involved. > The "non-free" part of the archive is only a last resort solution. When you move something to non-free, you also need to move any package that depends into a contrib part of the archive, and that would be much worse than replacing embedded json extension with the pecl that Remi wrote. Basically the "non-free" was created to circumvent the US crypto export restrictions (the machine was hosted outside US) and not as a solution to license problems in _core_ packages created by a guy who thinks it's funny to mess with people and mocks people who takes the licensing seriously. O. -- Ondřej Surý <ond...@sury.org> Have you tried Knot DNS – https://www.knot-dns.cz/ – a high-performance authoritative-only DNS server
