Hi, I am working with other members of the Debian devlopment team to include many of your fine PEAR packages in Debian. One recurring problem has been consistently arising however, that we have had a hard time addressing at the correct level, which is why I am contacting you about it. The problem is that many of the PEAR packages are licensed under the PHP License. As you probably know, many packages take the PHP License by default, probably because they assume that they are writting in PHP and so they want to use the same license. The problem is that the current version of The PHP License (version 3.0) contains several clauses which are specific to the PHP language, and either inapplicable or even problematic for applications written in PHP. For the sake of completeness, and in an effort to get this issue ironed out once and for all, let's walk through the six points of The PHP License: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. These two points are almost identical to the first two points in the BSD License, and are all kinds of good. :-) 3. 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 group@php.net. 4. Products derived from this software may not be called "PHP", nor may "PHP" appear in their name, without prior written permission from group@php.net. You may indicate that your software works in conjunction with PHP by saying "Foo for PHP" instead of calling it "PHP Foo" or "phpfoo" Hmm. These two points are very specific to distributions of the PHP language. A PHP application that is distributed separately from PHP itself should 1) not need to stipulate how the name "PHP" is used, and 2) probably lacks any authority to make such claims. 5. The PHP Group may publish revised and/or new versions of the license from time to time. Each version will be given a distinguishing version number. Once covered code has been published under a particular version of the license, you may always continue to use it under the terms of that version. You may also choose to use such covered code under the terms of any subsequent version of the license published by the PHP Group. No one other than the PHP Group has the right to modify the terms applicable to covered code created under this License. Good, good. 6. Redistributions of any form whatsoever must retain the following acknowledgment: "This product includes PHP, freely available from <http://www.php.net/>". Ouch. This means that I can't distribute a PEAR module released under the PHP License without bundling in PHP itself. This makes it impossible to distribute PEAR modules by themselves (i.e. not bundled with the PHP language) in a deb or an rpm. :-( The problem is severe enough that we are currently unable to package PEAR modules for Debian when they are relased under the PHP License. We attempt to contact the upstream authors, and ask them to adopt a new license, but our requests are not always accepted. So, what can be done to rectify this situation? 1) The PHP License itself could be modified to become a more generic license, removing points that don't apply to PHP applications, making it compatible with its current use by most PEAR modules. (Arguably the resultant license would be indistinguishable from the BSD license.) 2) The PEAR Group could change its licensing policy, and no longer include the PHP License in the list of officially acceptable PEAR licenses. Of course it might take a while for existing modules to be changed, but if the PEAR Group had an official position on this, it would be a lot easier for us to work with individual package maintainers to incrementally make this change. Your assistance in finding a workable solution to this problem is solicited. As you can tell, we at Debian are quite excited about PEAR and the clean interface which it provides for installing and working with PHP modules. Thus our interest in working this issue out, so that we can include more PEAR modules in Debian. :-) Let me clarify that while I maintain several Debian packages (including several PEAR modules), I am not yet an official Debian developer. Nor do I speak officially on behalf of the Debian community. I am simply attempting to assist our two groups (Debian and PEAR) in coming to a resolution which will address the licensing issue outlined above. I realize that this issue may have been partially discussed in the past, but given the current state of things, I consider it currently unresolved. Thank you for your time and consideration in evaluating and dealing with this licensing issue. Charles -- Substitutes Resemble Tail-chasing pup Follow and follow But never catch up Burma-Shave http://burma-shave.org/jingles/1941/substitutes
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