PHP4 License

[Russell McOrmond]

(Copying local discussion group as there may be interest in this topic:


> Quoting Dan Kuykendall:
> 
> > This is sometimes a limitation, but there are still so many php3 users
> > that we havent felt its worth dropping php3 support just yet. Also Im
> > not happy with the new php4 license and some sites wont upgrade due to
> > it. Hopefully this will be worked out, but we have beena bel to do a
> > surprising amount with php3/php4 compatible code.



On Fri, 26 Jan 2001, Anil Madhavapeddy wrote:

> Out of interest, what's their problem with the new PHP4 license that
> prevents an upgrade?  It seems to be very BSD-like.


  I am one of those who didn't switch because of the license, but note
that some of the problems are slowly being resolved.

  In the old License FAQ the authors attack the GPL, making it hard for
Free Software consulting companies like myself to not get further into
silly license debates.  This old FAQ is no longer accessable, reducing
some of these problems.  The new FAQ doesn't have any of that inflamatory
text in it, and is now available here: http://www.php.net/license/

  The basic issue was the confusion over the words "commercial" and the
separate word "proprietary". The "You offer support for PHP, and these
guys disagree with your use of terminology, so who is right" discussions
with clients become a huge waste of time/money.

  Origional notes I wrote on the topic are here:
http://www.flora.org/flora.status/116




See also:
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/licenses.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses

---cut---
   The PHP License, Version 2.02.
          This license is used by most of PHP4, but one important part of
          PHP4, the Zend optimizer, uses a different and worse license:
          the QPL.

          This is a non-copyleft free software license with practical
          problems like those of the original BSD license, including
          incompatibility with the GNU GPL.

          PHP3 is not under this license. PHP3 is disjunctively
          dual-licensed with the GNU GPL. Thus, while PHP4 (which is
          covered only by the PHP 2.02 License) is still free software,
          we encourage you to use and make improvements to only PHP3.
          That way, we can have an active version of PHP whose license is
          compatible with the GPL. If you are interested in helping
          maintain an active version of PHP3, please contact the GNU
          Volunteer Coordinators <gvc at gnu.org>.
---cut---


  With the practical problems slowly being resolved, I still consider an
important package such as PHP moving from a dual-license to a BSD-like
license to be a step backwards for the Free Software movement.  There was
an irony in the QT announcement
<http://www.trolltech.com/company/announce/gpl.html> given that QT (The
license the Zend folks modeled their license after) was heading the
opposite direction as PHP/Zend.


  That battle seems to have been lost and I feel forced to support PHP4 in
future projects.  Too many other projects are moving to using PHP4
specific functions and I can't justify to clients the extra time spent on
PHP3 compatability.

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://russell.flora.org/work/>
 Future FLORA Expansion  <http://www.flora.org/flora.admin.design/296>