Re: Yet another question about licensing

> The extensions will be released under the php license, but the libraries > themselves are not open source at this time. (they plan to release the > source after 2-3 yrs). Currently they are available as free binary > downloads for non-commercial use. > > Would I be able to have the extensions included in PECL? This would > greatly strengthen my argument for having php extensions. > The first thing you can do is provide the text of the license under which these libraries are distributed. Perhaps a standard EULA included with your product... The next thing I would say is that the BIG no-no of inclusion in PECL is a viral license agreement (such as the GPL) which states that programs and libraries written to link against GPL libraries must themselves be GPL. This sort of thing has a cascading effect that can winnow it's way all the way back to the PHP core. In the interrest of keeping PHP free-as-in-free we're trying to keep it away from licenses which contain clauses similar to the GPL. Inclusion of an extension which links against a closed source license would not be entirely unprecedented but it would have to be approached with caution. One suggestion I might offer is that you host the extension yourself, but utilize the PECL packaging system. Check the PEAR documentation on how to use a command line switch to instruct the bundled php tool to install PEAR/PECL packages from repositories OTHER than http://pear.php.net and http://pecl.php.net. -Sara