hi folks, On Wed, Aug 24, 2005 at 10:38:23AM +0200, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote: > > He's referencing the passage that mentions that you can't use "PHP" > > in your package name. If you called it "BB of PHP" it would be fine. > > I fail to understand why the licence under which the PHP programming > language resorts, can govern software under the GPL, since the PHP licence > only mentions derivative works, not applications written in that > programming language. If phpbb would be a PHP-derivative you would be > completely correct. But it's clearly not, so in what way do those terms > apply to it? the PHP license can not be enforced on packages written in PHP and distributed under a different license. however, the if PHP has a trademark on the PHP name, this may be a different issue. the php project could, if they had and were actively enforcing their trademark, send us (or certain upstream authors) a cease-and-desist letter requiring that all php libraries/modules/packages not contain the term PHP, or only if we arranged to do so under some agreement (which might or might not include the exchange of cash). however, i don't think they have a trademark (and they are certainly not actively enforcing it if they do, and no trademark notice appears on their homepage), and the pre-existance of a large amount of software with such naming conventions for several years would suggest that they aren't concerned that we name packages to include php, such as libphp-adodb and the like. if they have an issue with the name of an upstream project like phpbb2, then it is between php and phpbb2 developers to work that out, and contact software distributions accordingly after the fact, but again, it's a similar situation based on whether or not they've established and are actively enforcing their trademark rights. hth, sean --
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