Re: Re-Releasing PEAR packages under the BSD license

On 12/18/06, Sylvain Beucler <beuc@beuc.net> wrote:

Hi, Can we move forward on this?

You may have noticed that the Structures_DataGrid people already re-released their packages with a new license. I don't think that there's going to be an across-the-board license change as, even if the copyright to the PEAR Group stands (which is debatable) they tend not to take such broad sweeping actions themselves as late.

Given this last message ("This is inherently an issue with the GPL"), I take it we agree there's incompatibility.

I am attempting to move to a different license on one of my packages, but one of my co-developers has pointed out something interesting. Apparently a while ago there was some discussion about licenses which concluded that the PHP License was better for PEAR packages than the LGPL and he's annoyed by the back and forth here.

On Fri, Dec 15, 2006 at 08:25:06PM +0100, Sylvain Beucler wrote: On Fri, Dec 15, 2006 at 09:58:40AM -0800, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:

Sylvain Beucler wrote:

I think that there is an issue, admittedly not obvious, but that, using PHP professionally, I care about. Whether you agree or not, in any case, I still think it would clarify the situation to re-release PHPL'd packages under the modified BSD.

Then we'll have to agree to disagree. This is inherently an issue with the GPL, not with the PHP license. The Apache/PHP license allows derived works with only a single restriction: use your own brand. I really don't want to drop that as we have a constant battle trying to fight perceived software quality issues and when software we don't control use our brand it becomes impossible to manage.

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear: this isn't about PHP. I have nothing to say about the PHP license as used by PHP. As we just pointed it doesn't impact php apps under the GPL, thanks to the GPL explicit exception about the underlying programming language. I know that there were requests for changes in the PHP License itself in the past but that's a separate issue and I'm not involved with that. Now, when applied to a PEAR package, the branding clauses of the PHP License, besides being pointless in that context, cause incompatibility with the GNU GPL. Since PHPL'd packages are not part of the PHP language itself, that GPL exception does not apply, hence the incompatibility. So, I'm simply asking whether those PEAR packages under the PHPL, and owned by the PHP group, could be re-released under the mBSD to ease their use in GPL'd apps.

-- Justin Patrin