At 01:19 29/06/99 , Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:
Before we can modify the PHP license (e.g., modify any clause in our
license or drop the GPL), we must get the approval of every single person
who've contributed code to the source tree, don't we? After all, these
people contributed code knowing the license is X, and now we want to change
it to X' (slight modifications to the PHP license) or even Y (if we drop
the GPL).
Correct, that is how you change a license. The same will have to be done
if PHP4 is released with a license that is in any way different from
PHP3's license since most of these same people have code in PHP4.
Well, there are clauses that probably don't need the consent of everybody, like the clause that deals with the new Zend engine. But I'm not sure about that, it's something I'd have to ask a lawyer about. And there are things that do require those approvals.
If we're to obtain the approvals of every single person who has written a single line of code in PHP 3.0 (and there were many), I want to add a clause in the license that will save us the trouble of ever doing it again in the future. I'm not sure about the legalese, but I think it should be possible to define a 'serious' code contributor and differentiate it from someone who submitted a couple of one liner patches. Basically, unless someone contributed a significant amount of code, he should agree to us changing the license as long as its nature is free. Someone who writes a whole module should obviously have the right to reject the new license and have his module removed from the standard distribution (nobody will want that anyway). What I'm aiming at is preventing us from having to run after fifty people if we want to change a single letter in the license.
I'm really not sure that finding all of these people and getting their approval is feasible. I don't think it is.
Zeev
--
Zeev Suraski <zeev@zend.com> http://www.zend.com/
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