Riley Baird wrote: >On 30/07/14 21:07, Thorsten Glaser wrote: >I agree that this would violate DFSG#3. > >However, I'm not convinced that the PHP license is only valid if the >software is distributed under *.php.net. Nowhere within the license does >it say that the program being licensed is PHP software, so the PHP >Group's definition of PHP software is irrelevant.
Yes. I also think that this is merely the case of a (possibly factually incorrect) advertising clause. Similar to, if you take say the BIO_* code from OpenSSL, and make that into a stand-alone library, that library's licence would still require mentioning that the product includes crypto code from EAY even though the code is not crypto code. This can be ameliorated by prefixing that advertising remark with a comment about its factual wrongness. This is something I would prefer the upstream developers to do, but can, IMHO, also be done within Debian, if needed. >> 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 >> that distributing the original source alongside patches is okay (e.g. as >> 3.0 (quilt) source package). Since Debian isn't distributing source pak- >> kages, this does not help us. A written permission from [email protected] is >> not helpful either, because of DFSG#8. > >Good point. (I think you're referring to section 4; correct me if I'm Right. >wrong.) This would make PHP-licensed software *with PHP in the title* >non-free until rebranded, like firefox was until rebranded to iceweasel. Indeed. And seeing this, I think that Debian may ship neither the PHP interpreter nor anything else under PHP licence without doing a rebranding. >This would not, however, make the license non-free, it would just make >for some annoying rebranding, which should be much more manageable. It would, however, make the licence inacceptable for Debian for anything bearing PHP in its name, which is kinda the point of the PHP licence. This is why I would like to ask the people in charge of PHP to reconsider licencing. Other BSD-style licences that seek to protect the integrity of the author's source code request or require mentioning, somewhere user-visible but not as annoying as doing a total rebranding, that the version is modified. (In the case of the original UW pine, for example, it was sufficient and, in fact, suggested, to merely add the letter 'L' (for local patches) to the version number, so "pine 4.64L" it is. In Debian, we have modified version numbers already anyway, and can add a note about this being a patched version of PHP in enough places. For software that is not the PHP interpreter, this is even more (or less, depending on the PoV and how close one is to the issue) weird/funny.) bye, //mirabilos -- PECL development discussion Mailing List (http://pecl.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
