Re: [PECL-DEV] Re: Re: [PHP-QA] Debian and the PHP license
Hi! This reading clearly fails DFSG#3 and OSD#3 at the very least, and makes *all* software using the PHP Licence non-free, because redistribution of derived works is only permitted from *.php.net which is clearly inaccep- table. This makes not just forking the software impossible but also dis- tribution of binaries made from modified sources, for example. I've by now read the PHP license here: http://php.net/license/3_01.txt about a dozen times and I still can't figure out where the claim redistribution of derived works is only permitted from *.php.net could come from. This of course is false both theoretically and practically. On the other hand, my own reading of the PHP Licence is that we may not, in fact, distribute (binaries of) modified versions of PHP software (the interpreter as well as everything else under that licence), period - but You could not distribute other derived products bearing the name of PHP - but distributing PHP itself is fine, since it's not a product derived from PHP but the actual PHP. If Debian OTOH decides to make their own fork of PHP, they can distribute it still, but not under the name of PHP. I don't think Debian even claimed that the thing they distribute under the name of PHP is anything but the original product, so I don't see a problem here. I'm not sure why there's an effort to seek maximally contorted interpretation of the rules that would appear to disallow Debian to do something that Debian is already doing, has been doing for years, and nobody ever objected to Debian doing and nobody ever intends to object. To me this effort does not seem to be constructive, and not leading to any improvement of anything, but only to more inconvenience and annoyance to everybody involved. (and it would be fun if Debian distributed Icescriptinglanguage, instead of PHP, except for those affected). I think taking this route would make Debian a huge disservice. Of course, 99.999% of Debian users would immediately switch to using a third-party repo that would include actual PHP packages instead of that contraption, but there's no reason to inflict this onto Debian users. -- Stanislav Malyshev, Software Architect SugarCRM: http://www.sugarcrm.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/53d94ed1.1020...@sugarcrm.com
Re: [PECL-DEV] Re: Re: [PHP-QA] Debian and the PHP license
Hi! I think everyone does claim that. You do know Debian doesn't just Everyone being whom specifically? distribute the binaries from Php.net, right? No contortion: the php5 in Debian is a derived work. Here's a list of patches http://sources.debian.net/src/php5/5.6.0%7Erc2%2Bdfsg-5/debian/patches There is no such thing as binaries from php.net, at least when Debian-supported OSes are concerned. But even if they were, it's not a separate product in any sane meaning of a product. Adding a config file does not make it into a new product. Neither I have ever seen any communication from Debian claiming it is anything but the product we all know and love as PHP. One could invent a thousand of contorted definition of product, including defining every binary with different sha1 checksum as separate product, but this pointless exercise has nothing to do with PHP and is just that - pointless. I agree that renaming would not be constructive. Why can't people call this PHP, please, PHP project? They can, and they were told so many, many times. Would you change the licence to something more usual, like MIT/X style? No, this is completely infeasible - this would require asking permission from every contributor from the start of the project. Moreover, this titanic effort would be completely useless as it would achieve no useful purpose, because everybody - including Debian - is free to distribute PHP under PHP license right now, and nobody ever tried to prevent anybody from doing so. Literally nobody except Debian people ever said there's any problem in that. Frankly, I am astonished at how much effort is spend to find trouble where there was not ever one. Can't we spend our time on something more useful? -- Stanislav Malyshev, Software Architect SugarCRM: http://www.sugarcrm.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/53d985bb.5030...@sugarcrm.com
Re: [PECL-DEV] Debian request to change the PHP license for Extensions
Hi! I think the difference is that we have a couple of clauses which sounds weird/makes no sense when the license is used for extensions or anything else than php-src, like clause 3, 4 and 6. And this is what they were complaining about in the thread referenced from their reject faq: https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/08/msg00128.html I understand they have a problem with 4, which we could maybe solve by having PHP Group grant Debian the permission, or by clarifying that merely patching PHP for purposes of BC or OS compatibility or such does not make it a separate derived product. With 5. I do not see any problem - looks like they misunderstand what it means. It has the or clause - you can always keep the license you had, and it's a pretty standard thing AFAIK. Yeah, but maybe we could do something like creating a new version of the license which makes it a bit clear, what do we mean by derived work(do Creating a new software license is a pretty huge undertaking. Even modification probably needs a good lawyer to look into it. we consider exts/sapis/etc. derived ork or not), removing the PHP includes the Zend Engine, freely available at http://www.zend.com. part, as only php-src includes the ZE, and it isn't available from zend.com http://zend.com anymore imo. As part of Zend Server, I'm pretty sure it still is. But this part is quite outdated. Maybe Zend wants to sponsor some work here about updating the license? -- Stanislav Malyshev, Software Architect SugarCRM: http://www.sugarcrm.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/53ad2fc1.4020...@sugarcrm.com
