Re: Proposal for license change

From: Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 05:14:42 +0000
Subject: Re: Proposal for license change
References: 1 2  Groups: php.internals 
Request: Send a blank email to [email protected] to get a copy of this message
On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:31 AM,  <[email protected]> wrote:
> 1, 2, 3. Zend?

Zend does not own PHP. And the waste majority of contributors do not
even work for 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.

Well, even for the latter there are issues. Let alone the v3 and *GPL
licenses, which create even more confusions.

> 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®").

And how do you finance it? World wild?

>> 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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-- 
Pierre

@pierrejoye | http://www.libgd.org


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