Re: Re-Releasing PEAR packages under the BSD license

On 12/14/06, Sylvain Beucler <beuc@beuc.net> wrote:

On Thu, Dec 14, 2006 at 11:54:48AM +0100, Christian Weiske wrote: Sylvain,

Currently I'm a bit unsure about whether I can or cannot use packages under the PHP license in my application.

You can use the packages without problems in your application, since GPL is more strict than the PHP license is. The other way round would not work. Hi, I don't think so. I think both licenses have requirements, but the PHP License requirements are not a subset of the requirements of the GPL. This is independant to whether the GPL has more or less requirements than the PHP License. This extra requirements of the PHP License are related to the use of the name 'PHP'. This is not in the GPL, so licenses are incompatible IMHO.

So? I honestly don't see what the problem here is. Just don't use the name "PHP" in the name of your project. That clause doesn't kick in and you have no problems.

The modified BSD's requirements are a subset of the GPL, so both licenses are compatible. Incompatible means I cannot combine the two kinds of work. You can use GPL'd code with (compatible) mBSD'd code - the resulting work will be under the GPL, be it in one way or another. But you cannot legally combine GPL'd code with incompatible code (hence why incompatible licenses are referenced at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses). This link has some more information about it: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatIsCompatible All in all, I don't think I can't legally use HTML_QuickForm in Savane :/

I think you're confusing 2 issues here. The licenses have 2 different use-cases. 1) You link/use some code from something in your application. 2) You modify or directly incorporate some code from something in your application. If you do 2) with incompatible licenses you're SOL. You can't do that. However, if you do 1) with "so-called" incompatible licenses you're ok. For example, all PEAR libraries are licensed with licenses such that you can "link" them to closed source applications without licensing your application under the same license. This is exactly what the LGPL is for and this is why we don't accept GPL or other licenses than what we have listed. Summary: require_once 'HTML/QuickForm.php'; is perfectly valid in your application, whatever license you put to your code, be it GPL, LGPL, PHP, closed/commercial, or OpenSSL. This constitutes linking another package's code into yours, not modifying it. -- Justin Patrin