Lucas Nussbaum writes ("Re: [PHP-QA] Debian and the PHP license"): > On 30/07/14 at 13:09 +0100, Ian Jackson wrote: > > Would it be possible for us to obtain some proper legal advice ? > > Do we have a relationship with the SFLC we could use for this ? > > Sure, we could ask for advice from SFLC about this.
OK, good. > > If so I would be happy to write up a summary of the facts and the > > questions to put to our lawyers. I think this is likely to be > > straightforward but I would send a draft to -legal and ftpmaster@ to > > check that the answer would actually resolve the problem one way or > > another. > > I think that such a summary would be very useful, at least to increase > the awareness about the issue, and to improve the description of the > violation on ftpmasters' REJECT FAQ. Yes. > However, based on my own (possibly limited) understanding of the > issue[1], this is case of a license (the PHP License) with sub-optimal > wording that is misused by third parties, as it was initially designed > for PHP itself, and is used for random software written in PHP. > As a result, the license adds some restrictions for derivative works > that could prevent software under that license to meet the DFSG. That is the contention of the critics, yes. > So I think that it is important to distinguish between two different > questions: > (1) Is there a legal risk for Debian to distribute such software? I would want to ask whether there is a risk for others, too. > (2) Does the Debian project want to tolerate and ignore this sad > situation, or try to make the world a better place by working > on fixing this mess? If we have a piece of legal advice which says that the risk is minimal, then surely that would be sufficient to make the world a place. It would surely be nice to fix this wrinkle in the PHP licence but if it doesn't actually meaningfully prevent anyone from doing anything they would want to, then no-one's actual freedom is impinged and reacting to it by throwing this software out of the archive is quite disproportionate. On the other hand if it _does_ pose a legal risk, then a legal opinion to say so would be very helpful in persuading the software's upstreams that it needs to be fixed. > When you have a summary and questions ready, we can work together on > forwarding them to SFLC for legal advice. I will get back to you. Ian. -- 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/21464.63997.84090.692...@chiark.greenend.org.uk