Re: php5-xapian: PHP licence vs GPL
On 2009-04-17, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: (And I was also under the impression that Debian follows the wishes of the copyright holder, so it doesn't matter if this argument has any legal merit, just that the FSF makes it.) Note that there's no FSF copyright code in the xapian-bindings upstream tarball, except for files generated by autoconf, automake, and libtool which are all either not GPL or GPL+exception. So the FSF isn't a relevant copyright holder that I can see, whatever Debian's policy in such matters might be. Cheers, Olly -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: php5-xapian: PHP licence vs GPL
On 2009-04-17, Francesco Poli f...@firenze.linux.it wrote: On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:09:57 +0200 Florian Weimer wrote: * Olly Betts: To summarise, php5-xapian wraps the GPLv2+ licensed Xapian library for PHP v3.01 licensed PHP5. The PHP license is fine if you use Xapian under the GPLv3. The FSF seems to disagree: quoting from http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses | PHP License, Version 3.01 | | This license is used by most of PHP4. It is a non-copyleft free | software license. It is incompatible with the GNU GPL because it | includes strong restrictions on the use of PHP in the name of | derived products. | | We recommend that you not use this license for anything except PHP | add-ons. As you may see, GPL *incompatibility* is explicitly stated. It's possible this FAQ entry may not have been updated for GPLv3 - I notice that it talks about PHP4, which is obsolete now, and PHP5 predates GPLv3. I guess Florian's thinking is based on additional restrictions allowed by GPLv3 7c: c) Prohibiting misrepresentation of the origin of that material, or requiring that modified versions of such material be marked in reasonable ways as different from the original version If so, the key issue seems to be whether the naming restriction in section 4 of the PHP licence can be considered reasonable: 4. Products derived from this software may not be called PHP, nor may PHP appear in their name, without prior written permission from gr...@php.net. You may indicate that your software works in conjunction with PHP by saying Foo for PHP instead of calling it PHP Foo or phpfoo Since the FSF FAQ describes these as strong restrictions, I guess they at least probably wouldn't regard them as reasonable. Cheers, Olly -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: php5-xapian: PHP licence vs GPL
On 2009-04-17, MJ Ray m...@phonecoop.coop wrote: Olly Betts o...@survex.com wrote: For reference, this is #513796 in the BTS. Will you summarise/link or should we cc? Good question. Since I didn't Cc: the start of the thread, I'll update the bug with a link to this thread, and summarise the consensus if/when one is reached. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.legal/7867 [...] * Is the quote above an accurate summary of the currently accepted interpretation? (That mail is from 2003 so perhaps things have changed since). I think it's still accurate. More recent links can be found in http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/04/msg00117.html Hmm, neither this nor any of the linked messages seem to talk about GPL compatibility though - they all seem to be discussing if the PHP licence is DFSG compatible at all, and whether it's OK for non-PHP group code. * If so, is there anything which can be done other than removing php5-xapian from the archive? Relicensing in some way. It might not be simple or even possible, but it seems like the only alternative I can see. It's not possible on the Xapian side (unless/until all the Open Muscat code is replaced), and it seems unlikely on the PHP side. Given others seem to have tried and failed to do something about the PHP naming clause, I don't feel optimistic about my own chances. * Assuming php5-xapian must be removed from the archive, can the xapian-bindings source package (which builds bindings for python, ruby, etc too) continue to include (now unused) source code for it, or do I need to prepare a special dfsg version of the upstream source tarball without this code? (I notice Steve says binaries for these modules, which hints that source may be OK). http://trac.xapian.org/ticket/191 makes me think the combination only happens at compile time, so including unused source would be OK. Yes, there's no code under the PHP licence in the upstream Xapian tarballs. Cheers, Olly -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
php5-xapian: PHP licence vs GPL
Hi, For reference, this is #513796 in the BTS. To summarise, php5-xapian wraps the GPLv2+ licensed Xapian library for PHP v3.01 licensed PHP5. The two licences are regarded as incompatible due to the restriction on names containing PHP in clause 4 of the PHP licence. The build process doesn't link against PHP (on Linux), though it does use PHP API header files. PHP is a rather noisy search term (since lots of URLs end .php) but my research of past debian-legal discussion eventually found this from Steve Langasek: There are several other PHP extensions in circulation that use GPLed libraries, some of them distributed with the PHP source itself. (The readline extension is one example.) Binaries for these modules can't be distributed in Debian, but that doesn't mean you can't write a PHP extension for a GPL library and distribute it on your own. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.legal/7867 Also, note that Xapian upstream don't control the copyright of all the code, so aren't able to add a special exception to the licence to allow for the PHP naming restriction. And it seems from past debian-legal discussion that PHP upstream are rather attached to this clause (though it seems to me a trademark would achieve the intended ends much better as a licence clause only has power over software derived from PHP itself). So I don't see relicensing as a plausible route for fixing this problem. So my questions are: * Is the quote above an accurate summary of the currently accepted interpretation? (That mail is from 2003 so perhaps things have changed since). * If so, is there anything which can be done other than removing php5-xapian from the archive? * Assuming php5-xapian must be removed from the archive, can the xapian-bindings source package (which builds bindings for python, ruby, etc too) continue to include (now unused) source code for it, or do I need to prepare a special dfsg version of the upstream source tarball without this code? (I notice Steve says binaries for these modules, which hints that source may be OK). Cheers, Olly -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
