Re: PHP license

On 27 Jun 2010, at 18:47, till wrote: > On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 6:43 PM, Hannes Magnusson <bjori@php.net> wrote: >> On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 18:33, till <till@php.net> wrote: >>> Didn't distros like Debian have major issues including PEAR packages >>> or software which relies on them because of the PHP license? >>> >>> This has been discussed before, but I can't find the threads now. >> >> The onlything I can find was issues with the license prior to 3.01 > > Maybe Helgi can dig up the threads later. :-) > > Regardless of the above - and this is strictly IMHO - it's also not > "the more, the merrier" in this case. Supporting five licenses bears > plenty of trouble and insecurity. Not just for PEAR but also for > people consuming the components and wondering what these licenses are > all about. > > I think that if we could trim that list it would make adoption easier > as well. I'm hoping people are already familiar enough with BSD, > Apache, MIT and LGPL. Back in 2008 the group voted that the PHP license should be disallowed from hence forth due to various OS being dissatisfied with the license and as such they don't distribute apps that depend on PEAR packages with PHP licenses (thus apps stay away from them or even remove PEAR packages to be able to be distributed) as well as companies finding the license a bit too iffy to use, thus excluding the usage of packages that they would have otherwise used. 3.01 fixes things partially but was still seeing some resistance from people. I am pretty sure it has a lot more to do with the long long frustration people had with previous versions. Also, v2 licensed packages do not get auto upgraded to 3 (and thus 3.01) so we anyway have to grab those people, which in turn makes it a lot more appeal to move away from the PHP license. The fact is, the PHP license shouldn't be used on PHP userland code, given that it was originally just the apache license with the PHP naming clause added in, then if people really like said license, they should move to the Apache License (this is a personal opinion but is echoed by many) These are just the excerpt I just made up based on the voting mails I found, I need to find the actual notes to have something a bit more solid - But the fact is, everyone on that 2008 group voted +1, many of which had been around the project for a very long time and knew very well the license problems we had gotten our way in the past. I hope that clear things up at least a bit :-) - Helgi