Re: Was MPL under consideration of good licenses for PEAR?

Axel Hecht wrote: > Hi all, > > we Mozillians want to start out on a project with a php implementation, > and would like to pick a license that is both good for PEAR/PECL and for > us. > > I have found > http://pear.php.net/manual/en/faq.devs.php#faq.licenses, > which mentions BSD and MIT, which we could go for, though Mitchell Baker > mourned the lack of patent protection therein, compared to the MPL. > > Thus, before we do stuff that nobody wants to revert, was the MPL > discussed yet? If, or if not, what was the outcome, or if not, would you > consider looking into it? > > Having glanced through the recent posting, I guess that a new decision > on the MPL would likely have to wait for the elections, am I right there? > > Thanks > > Axel Hi Axel, This is a very good question. We've had a lot of questions recently about licensing, which I take to be a good problem (clearly interest is growing) but it is still a problem. Now that the elections are (almost) settled, the PEAR Group sat down and took a look at this question in particular, and the one thing they are sure of (and I share this sentiment) is that we need legal advice before we make any decisions about licensing. As the president, I have contacted the Software Freedom Law Center, and am waiting for a response, I am hopeful we will have advice on how to proceed very soon. In the mean time, would you be comfortable beginning the proposal process for the code you intend to write, and then once a decision is made on licensing, choosing a license then? The license need not be set in stone until the first public release of the code. As president, part of my responsibilities include liaising between PEAR and external projects like Mozilla, and so I am happy to try to answer any questions you might have both on pear-dev@lists.php.net and offlist via my email address. You may also mail pear-group@php.net with any confidential questions, and the whole PEAR Group will see the questions. Sorry for the delay, we should be up and running now. Thanks, Greg