Hello Daniel, I do not care for IBM problems. Not at all. If people want to commit they can do it in their free time. If IBM now thinks they have to make PHP suitable for their own stuff then they are obviously willing to spend quite some interest because they have a much bigger business interest. That said I am confident they can find ways to deal with it inside IBM itself. But they do not like to do it as that would be much more expensive for them. Also the trouble is that then they would need to be real open source. So why in the end not force everybody to sign a CLA. Everybody meaning every sinegle developer on the PHP project. That is from the guy that translates documentation every once in a while to people working on the core like me (And for me it would mean I will instantly stop contribution to PHP at all). And in the long run what are the consequences? Where do we stop? IBM is only one drive behind all this. Actually this is driven by more bigger companies. And the all share the same problem and they all want the same. Today PHP is something that makes money when you can run it on your server fast. So that creates business interest. And business interest creats the will to take over control in anyway and ownership. So in the very long way, will we loose the PHP License (or will it be rewritten?). Open source means open discussions. If something has to be discussed in some hidden rooms than that is not open source! And if something has to be forced over us then that is not the spirit of PHP. In the past eleven years we have been discussing everything openly. We all sometimes hated this openness but on the other hand it is also part of the success of PHP. So what to hell with all this?
marcus Thursday, November 29, 2007, 12:13:51 AM, you wrote: > On Nov 28, 2007 5:49 PM, Rasmus Lerdorf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Lukas Kahwe Smith wrote: >> > >> > On 28.11.2007, at 00:28, Pierre wrote: >> > >> >> One word: transparency. >> >> >> >> It is amazing how it helps to discuss things instead of acting like that. >> > >> > I find it amazing how oblivious to community concerns this all is. >> > Anyways, from some other discussions I gathered that the main thing that >> > is currently being talked about is CLA's. Once they have a CLA in place >> > they will "open" the discussions. From what I hear at least part of the >> > previous "secret" discussions will then be opened as well via some kind >> > of archive. >> >> I agree. As most of you know, I met with IBM a couple of years ago the >> last time they were keen on getting a CLA in place so they could >> contribute more. I voiced my skepticism, but kept an open mind and put >> the ball in their court asking them to write up a detailed explanation >> of how a CLA will help the average PHP contributor. They said they >> would do that and disappeared never to be heard from again. >> >> My stance on this hasn't changed. I don't care the slightest how a CLA >> helps them, I want to hear what it does for us. The obvious benefit for >> the project is to get more contributions, but the cost of those >> contributions in terms of a CLA burden has to be weighed. And so far >> nobody has adequately justified why the average PHP contributor should >> sign a CLA. >> >> The existing CLA stuff on IBM-specific stuff like DB2, SDO and IDS was >> something I didn't care much about since it was pretty much entirely an >> IBM effort and I doubted there would be a general interest in those >> things, which has pretty much turned out to be the case. But I am very >> much against expanding this to cover more of PHP and encroaching on >> general-purpose things that a large number of non-patent encumbered PHP >> contributors would have an interest in. >> >> So yes, before this goes any further, we need full disclosure here and a >> really well thought out explanation by someone convincing us of the >> benefits of signing a CLA. Barring that, I am with Marcus and Lukas on >> this. Keep it out of PHP CVS and host it somewhere else. >> >> -Rasmus >> >> -- >> PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List >> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php >> >> > Without sounding too naive on this, I hope, isn't it also possible > that IBM's internal policies require them to have CLAs in place for > tax and documentation purposes? Or perhaps to cover their own > engineers from liability by claiming them as open source developers, > protected under the agreement accepted, ultimately, by the end user. > I'd concur that it doesn't belong in the PHP CVS because it's out > of the scope and spirit of the initial project, but is it really such > a Big Brother issue? It states that all developers are completely > free to use and redistribute any code they commit to the repository > and the project as a whole, and further, that any user can then use it > freely to create derivative works from said code, et cetera. > Of course, it does lay the groundwork for new licensing in the > future, whereby this project could eventually take on more and more of > PHP, until a project that began as open source joins the ranks as a > commercial competitor to ASP and Java. > Then again, maybe I'm missing something or just blowing smoke out > of my ass. I'm exhausted, but I'm trying to understand a bit more > about the hot-button parts of the issue. > -- > Daniel P. Brown > [office] (570-) 587-7080 Ext. 272 > [mobile] (570-) 766-8107 > If at first you don't succeed, stick to what you know best so that you > can make enough money to pay someone else to do it for you. Best regards, Marcus -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
