dbase and Debian

Hi all, today i found that debian has removed the php4-dbase package from unstable/testing due maintainer request. This has brought me some problems with many programs at work, so I decided to create my own PHP4 package with dbase support, using apt-build. This mail is to ask, if there is any plan/project/intention to change the dbase code (that is non-free in debian policy) with other library like libxbase. I'll look if that can be done without much effort, so I can send the patch to PHP project, or if I release a php module called php-xbase separatly. Unfortunately, I can't convert the dbf files to SQL tables, so, i need dbase support in PHP :( Thx. Ricardo