Hi,
First of all, in the last couple of days I have seen a number of very
unconstructive mails being fired off, these simply seem to be people
bitching rather than trying to write in a precise and concise way, what
their problem is.
It is correct that telling people to shut up won't resolve the issue,
but apparently theres no agreement on what the issue is. Within the last
couple of days there has been a number of different issues all being
related to some people fearing that Zend controlling the engine being
used in PHP will mean the end of PHP (or something).
Does Zend really have control over PHP, and thereby the PHP core
language. According to the grant that Zend gave to the PHP Group [1] it
says that if PHP decides to modify the ZendEngine (ZE), it has to be
done under the QPL 1.0 -- this means that (AFAIK and I am NOT a lawyer)
IF there are modifications to the ZE, these MAY be freely distributed as
long as the patch/modifications are available to Zend (which they would
be anyway since PHP is governed by the PHP OSL) and that we do not
modify the license that the ZE is released under.
For me this means that no matter what happens to Zend, the PHP Group
can, if it wishes to do so, continue to develop the ZE without any
restrictions except to keep the ZE under the license that it is
currently under, am I missing something?
Besides the QPL is (again AFAIK) defined as OpenSource, which garantees
us that we can continue to work on it, no matter what Zend decides in
the future [2].
So what control does Zend really have? They contribute to the
development of PHP with the engine, freely, and generally have also made
some of the modules for PHP, and under their license we can still
modify&redistribute ZE, and if this is not in PHPs interest then
frankly, I don't know what is.
Is ZE not an integral part of PHP, because if it isn't, then we have a
problem because PHP relies on it, now on the other hand if ZE is a part
of PHP why do we need an abstraction layer, doesn't that just tell the
folks over at Zend, that:
1) we don't like them.
2) we'd rather have someone else make the engine because we are troubled
by license/control/...
And if its 2), then let us write exactly what the problem is.
Now what is really the issue?
HTH.
Kind regards,
David.
[1] Zend Grant: http://www.php.net/license/ZendGrant
[2] OSD Definition: http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition_plain.html
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