Fwd: [PHP-DEV] Proposal for license change
1, 2, 3. Zend?
4, 5. GPL compatibility is for users to use PHP in a GPL-licensed project, not for PHP developers to
include GPL-licensed code in their PHP project.
6. [email protected] may license the mark unconditionally for licensees to achieve the same effect as
"removing the clause". The mark license would be for copyright, so there would be no
conflict with the trademark ("PHP®").
> On Apr 2, 2014, at 6:03, Johannes Schlüter <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2014-04-02 at 05:27 +0700, [email protected] wrote:
>>> Products derived from this software may not be called "PHP", nor may
>> "PHP" appear in their name, without prior written permission from
>> [email protected]. You may indicate that your software works in
>> conjunction with PHP by saying "Foo for PHP" instead of calling it
>> "PHP Foo" or "phpfoo"
>> I propose removing this clause from the PHP license for GPL
>> compatibility. My proposal is to make PHP a trademark (as Python is),
>> because trademark law is intended to deal exactly with this issue. I'm
>> completely happy with the current license, but I propose this as an
>> improvement.
>
> It is not that trivial. A few quick thoughts:
>
> * Getting a trademark for three letters isn't trivial, most
> trademark authorities limit those to few cases like BMW or SAP.
> We could probably prove PHP's relevance but still effort
> * Unlike Python we have no legal entity which could own it. We
> could only register it to a natural person (i.e. Rasmus)
> * We have no fundings to finance the registration (registration
> fees, lawyer to do the bureaucracy etc)
> * The thing with GPL compatibility is partly a religious thing --
> Mind GPL's virality: If one component is GPL all other parts
> become GPL, too. So if we'd lateron start bundling GPL code we
> are on a sword's edge of becoming GPL. This becomes really
> complicated with extensions for commercial libraries. Some
> contributors also have stronger objections to GPL.
> * We make use of other components which probably aren't
> GPL-compatible licensed either, see i.e. php-src/main/spprintf.c
> * Such a drastic change might require collecting permission from
> all past contributors. Some of them are hard to reach.
>
> johannes
>
>
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