Re: Re-Releasing PEAR packages under the BSD license

Nice answer - anyone feel like adding that to http://pear.php.net/manual/en/faq.php as it tends to crop up every few months... Regards Alan Rasmus Lerdorf wrote: > [snip] > > It all comes down to semantics of what linking means. The PHP license > is pretty much identical to the Apache license and you could indeed make > a case for not allowing any GPL'ed software to be "linked to" from > Apache either. > > See http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-1.1 > > The PHP license was chosen to match the Apache license because Apache > and PHP are tied so closely to each other. > > This hair splitting over linking, derivation and aggregation has been > going on since the beginning of time. My stance is that you can indeed > ship PHP licensed PEAR components on the same cd or in the same tarball > as GPL'ed code because I see it as an aggregate work. This changes if > you take PEAR code, modify it and copy-paste it directly into your own > work. Then it moves from aggregate to derived. But the intent of the > PEAR components is to be used in aggregate form. The PHP license allows > you to use it in derived form as well, of course, but then you should be > choosing a license other than the GPL for the derived work. > > The FSF has a FAQ on aggregation here: > > > http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation > > That text is heavily biased towards compiled software and they talk > about executables and memory spaces which don't really apply in this > case. If you don't consider using a PEAR component as aggregation then > it logically follows that you also cannot have Apache call your code so > you will have to stipulate that nobody can use your code from Apache. I > think this is an extreme interpretation that pretty much nobody out > there shares. > > In short, I don't see an issue here. Move along. > > -Rasmus > >