debian status on using the PHP license for pear/pecl extensions

[Ferenc Kovacs]

Hi,

What is the current progress on this?
>From the archives I can see that there were a draft of questions to be sent
to the SFLC(https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2014/08/msg00062.html)
but the last mail about that was almost a year ago pinging the ftpmasters
for approval of the questions(
https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2014/12/msg0.html)

While the questions are specific to the PHP license, the original topic
which sparked the discussion was about the usage of the php license for
software other than the php itself.

The PHP Group and every php core devs participating in the discussion
seemed to hold the idea that any sofware distributed under *.php.net are
fine to be distributed under the PHP license.

For reference here is Rasmus stating that:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2014/07/msg00030.html

php.net has a page explicitly stating the source for software covered by
the PHP license (http://php.net/software.php) since 2005 which includes
pear.php.net and pecl.php.net.
Both pear.php.net and pecl.php.net refers to the PHP license (
https://pear.php.net/copyright.php https://pecl.php.net/copyright.php).

https://ftp-master.debian.org/REJECT-FAQ.html
states the following for php:

"You have a PHP add-on package (any php script/"app"/thing, not PHP itself)
and it's licensed only under the standard PHP license. That license, up to
the 3.x which is actually out, is not really usable for anything else than
PHP itself. I've mailed our -legal list about that and got only one
response, which basically supported my view on this. Basically this license
talks only about PHP, the PHP Group, and includes Zend Engine, so its not
applicable to anything else. And even worse, older versions include the
nice ad-clause. One good solution here is to suggest a license change to
your upstream, as they clearly wanted a free one. LGPL or BSD seems to be
what they want."

The current PHP license version(3.01) was introduced in 2005 explicitly for
clarifying the situation for pear and pecl:
http://git.php.net/?p=web/php.git;a=commit;h=81c577f5ed8b2a2fc965e70dae31ee2c8d5be8e7

You can see that the change was to clarify what counts as php software:
https://www.diffchecker.com/ud9nzxep

>From the PHP project's side they was in the belief that they resolved the
issue with the distribution of pear and pecl extensions under the PHP
license.

I couldn't go over every related email on debian-legal yet, but it seems
that many/most people was satisfied with the change PHP license version
3.01 brought but there were at least one person (Francesco Poli) who still
argued that the license is still not good enough, but his problems were
generic and not related to distribution of extensions in specific:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/04/msg00117.html
https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/04/msg00134.html

he also stated that while he thinks that his points are true he seems to be
a minority with that opinion:

"Filing a serious bug against package php[345] is unlikely to produce
significant results, unless I can convince other debian-legal regulars that
there actually is a problem. If I filed a bug report now, the php package
maintainer would probably come to debian-legal to check whether my claims
are backed by some consensus on the list and/or review previous discussions
about the topic: he would probably close the bug. Consequently, I think
that I must first gain consensus on the list and *only then* file a serious
bug against php[345] and hope the issue can be fixed by upstream."

but regardless of all that discussion the regarding php REJECT-FAQ stayed
the same since 2005:
http://web.archive.org/web/20051228080718/http://ftp-master.debian.org/REJECT-FAQ.html
https://ftp-master.debian.org/REJECT-FAQ.html
even though all of that discussion and effort from both parties.

for some years that doesn't really caused any visible issues, but something
happened in 2014, because debian package managers started to fill license
change requests for the extensions as Paul Tagliamonte started to enforce
the REJECT-FAQ via filling issues in the debian bugtracker which was
further escalated by Ondřej when he cloned
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=752629 for every affected
package after he got turned down by the FTP Masters:

"I should have done this earlier before cloning the bugs, so here's some
more background on the bugs filled. I did have a quite long and extensive
chat with FTP Masters and our conclusion was that PHP License (any version)
is suitable only for software that comes directly from "PHP Group", that
basically means only PHP (src:php5) itself."

After that the PHP project got notified from the incoming bugreports for
the extensions and I've tried to find a resolution satisfying both parties,
but without much success.

Maybe this time it will be different.

Re: debian status on using the PHP license for pear/pecl extensions

[Ángel González]

If the current FAQ entry related to PHP hasn't changed since 
http://web.archive.org/web/20051016231155/http://ftp-master.debian.org/REJECT-FAQ.html, 
I don't think the entry, and most importantly the phrase « That license, 
up to the 3.x which is actually out, is not really usable for anything 
else than PHP itself» can be applied to license v3.01 released *after* that.


IMHO the ftp masters shouldn't be applying such FAQ entry and have to 
reevaluate the new license instead.


(I should note that someone slightly edited it in the meantime, adding a 
comma and changing its → it's; so maybe they *did* review 3.01 and found 
nothing else worth changing)



Best

Re: debian status on using the PHP license for pear/pecl extensions

[Ferenc Kovacs]

On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 11:30 PM, Ángel González  wrote:

> If the current FAQ entry related to PHP hasn't changed since
> http://web.archive.org/web/20051016231155/http://ftp-master.debian.org/REJECT-FAQ.html,
> I don't think the entry, and most importantly the phrase « That license, up
> to the 3.x which is actually out, is not really usable for anything else
> than PHP itself» can be applied to license v3.01 released *after* that.
>
> IMHO the ftp masters shouldn't be applying such FAQ entry and have to
> reevaluate the new license instead.
>

I suppose/hope they re-evaluted it when Ondřej contacted them regarding
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=752629 but it seems that
the discussion ended with the same result:

I did have a quite long and extensive chat with FTP Masters
and our conclusion was that PHP License (any version) is
suitable only for software that comes directly from "PHP Group",
that basically means only PHP (src:php5) itself.

I would like to see those arguments for interpreting the license that way
and what else could we do to make it possible for debian to distribute
pear/pecl extensions published under pear|pecl.php.net under the PHP
license.



>
> (I should note that someone slightly edited it in the meantime, adding a
> comma and changing its → it's; so maybe they *did* review 3.01 and found
> nothing else worth changing)
>

those were changed by this commit, which fixed other typos and punctuation
mistakes done by a Luca who is an FTP Assistant:

commit a735b930272fbe56e602fa2d0b23288a55256ba3
Author: Luca Falavigna 
Date:   Mon Oct 17 09:34:20 2011 +

Fix typos

Signed-off-by: Luca Falavigna