> On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 1:13 PM, Ulf Wendel <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I perceive this reply as both sarcastic and agressive. Any particular >> reason bashing someone doing nothing but asking not to rush? > > It is certainly due to the language differences but there was nothing > sarcastic nor aggressive in my reply. So let me try to rephrase it. > > > >>> Amen. > > It means: I cannot agree more with you here. > >>> And it cannot be done without asking every single contributor. Let say >>> it is an impossible task at this point, or very very hard. > > > Even if we would like to rush, we can't, because we have to ask much > more people now that we did back then. The changes proposed by Debian > (what Ferenc proposed here) are also much more important than some > links changes, like what we did for 3.01. >
With no intention to rush anything whatsoever, I'd like to bring my modest contribution here. I obviously have no weight whatsoever in this discussion as I am not directly a PHP extension developer. I only use them to develop free software (which is why I'm interested in participating and I'm glad I can as this is an open list). I'll retake the text from https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/08/msg00128.html to elaborate on each point: > 3. and 4. are IMO highly questionable if not directly non-free. > With 4 you dont seem to be allowed to call it php if there is a > diff.gz... And now try to use that point on a php-foo package. He's talking about 3 (from the PHP 3.0 license from which the excerpts are not much different in 3.0.1): > "The name "PHP" must not be used to endorse or promote products derived > from this software without prior written permission. For written > permission, please contact [email protected]." My own questioning is: does it really benefit the PHP community to prevent that? I mean that if you search for "PHP" now on Github, you'll find a hundred pages of projects including "php" or "PHP" in their name. I'm sure each of them "endorses" or "promotes" their project in some way that would match the description above in a purely legal sense. Surely, some of this promotion is in the benefit of PHP, right? Who would benefit from filing a lawsuit on the basis of that part of the license? If not enforcing it anyway, is it useful? Removing a rule would certainly make it easier to understand. About 4: > "Products derived from this software may not be called "PHP", nor may > "PHP" appear in their name, without prior written permission > from [email protected]. You may indicate that your software works in > conjunction with PHP by saying "Foo for PHP" instead of calling > it "PHP Foo" or "phpfoo" My argument here re-uses the argument for "3": look at the projects on Github. If enforcing this part of the license, would it benefit anyone? Notably: https://github.com/facebook/facebook-php-sdk is a SDK developed by Facebook and that includes PHP in its name, and released under the Apache license... For 5: > does one really use a license that can be randomly exchanged by > any later thing? Yes, many people do use "GPL 2 or later" in their > programs, similar point, but not fully IMO. As a developer, *I* would like to be able to choose whether I'm relying on future versions editors to decide what they can do with my code. I think what the danger here is to make sure PHP cannot affect a distribution in some way that would put it in a lockup situation, whereby the PHP license suddendly says that all distribution containing this software can be considered to be shipped under the PHP license, and that anyone could then pretend to benefit from that. These are all hypothetical cases, of course, but I would like to believe that we are all developing under shareable licenses here because we want, at a deeper level, to make sure our stuff can also benefit others, because we are good by nature, right? So avoiding loopholes allowing some future evil people to take over the project and pervert it would make sense, right? What if MySQL had had the same term in its license? > But a big thing against using a PHP license is that it always only talks > about "PHP", "Software provided by PHP Development Team", "software made > by many individuals in behalf of PHP group", and "This software includes > the Zend Engine". Im sure that none of the php-* modules contain the > zend engine. :) And this, as Johannes puts it, "has already been modified to satisfy Debian", so maybe there is some light discussion possible here. Finally, your argument, Pierre, is that changing the license "cannot be done without asking every single contributor", however the license states that "You may also choose to use such covered code under the terms of any subsequent version of the license published by the PHP Group", so, in fact, maybe you just don't have to ask every single contributor :-) (which is kind of what the Debian guys are against if I'm understanding well) Regards, Yannick -- PECL development discussion Mailing List (http://pecl.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
