RE: [PHP-DEV] Please..

Hi, First of all, in the last couple of days I have seen a number of very unconstructive mails being fired off, these simply seem to be people bitching rather than trying to write in a precise and concise way, what their problem is. It is correct that telling people to shut up won't resolve the issue, but apparently theres no agreement on what the issue is. Within the last couple of days there has been a number of different issues all being related to some people fearing that Zend controlling the engine being used in PHP will mean the end of PHP (or something). Does Zend really have control over PHP, and thereby the PHP core language. According to the grant that Zend gave to the PHP Group [1] it says that if PHP decides to modify the ZendEngine (ZE), it has to be done under the QPL 1.0 -- this means that (AFAIK and I am NOT a lawyer) IF there are modifications to the ZE, these MAY be freely distributed as long as the patch/modifications are available to Zend (which they would be anyway since PHP is governed by the PHP OSL) and that we do not modify the license that the ZE is released under. For me this means that no matter what happens to Zend, the PHP Group can, if it wishes to do so, continue to develop the ZE without any restrictions except to keep the ZE under the license that it is currently under, am I missing something? Besides the QPL is (again AFAIK) defined as OpenSource, which garantees us that we can continue to work on it, no matter what Zend decides in the future [2]. So what control does Zend really have? They contribute to the development of PHP with the engine, freely, and generally have also made some of the modules for PHP, and under their license we can still modify&redistribute ZE, and if this is not in PHPs interest then frankly, I don't know what is. Is ZE not an integral part of PHP, because if it isn't, then we have a problem because PHP relies on it, now on the other hand if ZE is a part of PHP why do we need an abstraction layer, doesn't that just tell the folks over at Zend, that: 1) we don't like them. 2) we'd rather have someone else make the engine because we are troubled by license/control/... And if its 2), then let us write exactly what the problem is. Now what is really the issue? HTH. Kind regards, David. [1] Zend Grant: http://www.php.net/license/ZendGrant [2] OSD Definition: http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition_plain.html