Re: [PECL-DEV] Debian request to change the PHP license for Extensions

[Ferenc Kovacs <tyra3l@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 6:32 AM, Stas Malyshev <smalyshev@sugarcrm.com> wrote:

Hi!

> Debian began to send requests to change PHP license for the PHP
> Extension arguing that the PHP License is only valid for PHP itself.

That's like saying Apache license is only valid for Apache httpd, and
Mozilla license is only valid for Mozilla Firefox. Makes little sense to
me.

I think the difference is that we have a couple of clauses which sounds weird/makes no sense when the license is used for extensions or anything else than php-src, like clause 3, 4 and 6.

And this is what they were complaining about in the thread referenced from their reject faq:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/08/msg00128.html

 

OTOH, I don't think anything really prevents PECL extension authors
to dual-license their extensions under whatever Debian would like, if
they want so. People that aren't extension authors probably can't do
much here though.

Yeah, but maybe we could do something like creating a new version of the license which makes it a bit clear, what do we mean by derived work(do we consider exts/sapis/etc. derived ork or not), removing the "PHP includes the Zend Engine, freely available at <http://www.zend.com>." part, as only php-src includes the ZE, and it isn't available from zend.com anymore imo.

Maybe also rewording the clauses about the written permission is required for using the PHP name part to more generic, so projects using the license can use it to protect their names.

Ofc these are just ideas from the top of my head, and IANAL.

 

But, since PHP itself is under PHP license, and extensions probably use
substantial parts of PHP code and thus arguably can be considered as
derived works, all the limitations that PHP License puts on derived
works would apply to them still.

yeah, it would be nice if we could clarify whether the derived work applies or not

 

Though not pretending to understand how
it really works legally, I guess Debian should have some lawyers that
understand it.

We could also ask the OSI guys I suppose.

 

So I guess I'm not sure what we can really do here or what Debian wants
to happen.

I think they just consider our license troublesome for exts as it seems too specific for php-src, and they only want to avoid possible license infringement.

I don't think that what they are doing is practical (I mean we don't even care/enforce about the don't use the php name part for example http://www.php-debugger.com/ is a debugger php extension), but we all know how considerate are the debian maintainers about licensing.

--
Ferenc Kovács
@Tyr43l - http://tyrael.hu