Re: Clarification regarding PHP License and DFSG status
On Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 04:39:52PM -0500, Charles Fry wrote:
> Again, this licence is intended for software distributed by the PHP
> Group at http://www.php.net/software/. It is obviously unfit for other
> software.
If I modify the software and distribute it, then it is not software
distributed at http://www.php.net/software/. You can get something
similar to it there, but not what I'm distributing.
I guess you could stretch the clause a bit, and interpret it as "this
includes PHP software; PHP software (but not necessarily this) is freely
available from ...". But, read naturally, I see "this includes PHP
software, and the included software is freely available from", and the
former seems contrived.
It also has all of the other problems with stupid verbatim acknowledgement
clauses, eg. can't fix the URL if it breaks (say, php.net becomes https
only, or php.net is purchased by a large corporation and getting PHP from
that particular URL is no longer free); can't translate it if your target
audience is Swedish. These issues so far havn't been considered DFSG-unfree,
but they're good indicators of poorly-conceived licenses.
--
Glenn Maynard
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