Re: [PECL-DEV] Re: Re: [PHP-QA] Debian and the PHP license

[Stas Malyshev <smalyshev@sugarcrm.com>]

Hi!

> This reading clearly fails DFSG#3 and OSD#3 at the very least, and makes
> *all* software using the PHP Licence non-free, because redistribution of
> derived works is only permitted from *.php.net which is clearly inaccep-
> table. This makes not just forking the software impossible but also dis-
> tribution of binaries made from modified sources, for example.

I've by now read the PHP license here:
http://php.net/license/3_01.txt
about a dozen times and I still can't figure out where the claim
"redistribution of derived works is only permitted from *.php.net" could
come from. This of course is false both theoretically and practically.

> On the other hand, my own reading of the PHP Licence is that we may not,
> in fact, distribute (binaries of) modified versions of PHP software (the
> interpreter as well as everything else under that licence), period - but

You could not distribute other derived products bearing the name of PHP
- but distributing PHP itself is fine, since it's not a "product derived
from PHP" but the actual PHP. If Debian OTOH decides to make their own
fork of PHP, they can distribute it still, but not under the name of
"PHP". I don't think Debian even claimed that the thing they distribute
under the name of PHP is anything but the original product, so I don't
see a problem here. I'm not sure why there's an effort to seek maximally
contorted interpretation of the rules that would appear to disallow
Debian to do something that Debian is already doing, has been doing for
years, and nobody ever objected to Debian doing and nobody ever intends
to object. To me this effort does not seem to be constructive, and not
leading to any improvement of anything, but only to more inconvenience
and annoyance to everybody involved.

> (and it would be fun if Debian distributed Icescriptinglanguage, instead
> of PHP, except for those affected).

I think taking this route would make Debian a huge disservice. Of
course, 99.999% of Debian users would immediately switch to using a
third-party repo that would include actual PHP packages instead of that
contraption, but there's no reason to inflict this onto Debian users.
-- 
Stanislav Malyshev, Software Architect
SugarCRM: http://www.sugarcrm.com/