Re: License changes

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Oct 20, 2005, at 1:10 PM, andrew morton wrote:

The other day I got a bug report on the Image_Color package about Debian's problems with the PHP License [1]. I'm sure that most of you are familiar with the issue as it's already been discussed on the list [2]. Everyone on both sides of the issue is aware of the problem, and steps are being taken to resolve the license itself. I don't think anyone needs to be filing bugs on individual packages regarding this.

If it was my code I'd just change the license, but I've only contributed a small part. Sadly, the original authors are unreachable so it seems to me that there are two options: are changing the PHP license or a compatible rewrite (which I have no interest in doing). Neither of those are acceptable. Only the copyright owner (e.g. original author) may change the license. You will need to track them down and get their blessing to relicense the code. Changing the PHP license won't work either; the fixed license will be "PHP License 4.0" (or whatever), and the code is licensed under v3.0. And I don't believe that the PHP license has the GPL's "this or subsequent versions" clause.

So you're screwed unless you can get the original author to relicense. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (Darwin) iD8DBQFDa/ZIxuUdPD6j2IMRAoMGAJsEirI3yD4Ol6Svmh5dt1hGd/DxswCfT4ow Zv53eaopdVgP1izI9L6b3yc= =2rhm -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----