On Sat, 18 May 2024 15:18:36 -0500 Ben Ramsey wrote: > Hi, all!
Hello Ben! > > Over the years, the open source community, including Debian, has had > a few lengthy discussions and disagreements regarding the PHP > license.[^1][^2][^3] The TL;DR sentiment of all these discussions > amounts to: change the license to something well-understood and less > problematic. Indeed, I have personally voiced my disappointment with the PHP License for a long time. See, for instance, my [analysis] of the PHP License, version 3.01, and an additional [comment] about another issue. [analysis]: <https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/11/msg00272.html> [comment]: <https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/02/msg00371.html> And I have also attempted to persuade the PHP Group to switch to a well known and widely adopted general purpose (DFSG-compliant) license. I got in touch with the PHP Group back in 2016 and tried to convince them to switch to the 3-clause BSD license, but my attempt was unfortunately unsuccessful... > > So, that’s what I’m proposing to do in a new RFC I’ve drafted for the > PHP project: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/php_license_update Given what I said above, you may guess I am really happy about your RFC! Thanks a lot for drafting it and for stewarding this proposal. > > I’ve not opened this up for discussion within the PHP project yet, > since I’m still collecting feedback, and that’s why I’m sharing it > here. I’ve put a lot of work into presenting what I think is a sound > and well-reasoned argument for this change, and I’m asking for > feedback from this group regarding the method and theory I’m using to > go about it. Here's some feedback about version 0.3 of your RFC. | The proposed changes for the PHP software repository will not affect | the PHP Manual. The PHP Manual will remain licensed under the Creative | Commons Attribution 3.0 License or later. How unfortunate! Creative Commons licenses are also controversial (although this one, CC-by-v3.0, is accepted by the Debian Project, I personally disagree). Anyway, the general recommendation is to license the documentation under the same legal terms as the documented program or library. Hence, I would suggest to also switch the PHP Manual to the 3-clause BSD license... this would be absolutely great (although it would probably require to seek approval among its copyright holders). | External extensions currently licensed under the PHP License may | continue to use the PHP License. There is no need to change extension | licenses. I don't think so. If the PHP Group decides to elect the 3-clause BSD license as the next version (4.0) of the PHP License, then clause 5 of the PHP License version 3.01 will kick in and any piece of software currently licensed under the terms of the PHP License version 3.01 will *instantly* be also available under the terms of the 3-clause BSD license, at the recipient's choice. A similar reasoning should hold for the Zend Engine License, as well... > > Thanks in advance! You're welcome. Thanks to you for sharing this draft document! > > Cheers, > Ben Bye! :-) > > > [^1]: > https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Flists.debian.org%2Fdebian-legal%2F+php > [^2]: https://lwn.net/Articles/604630/ > [^3]: https://ftp-master.debian.org/php-license.html > -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/ There's not a second to spare! To the laboratory! ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
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