Re: license issues
There is no reason we would need to contact anyone to release a version
of PHP under the PHP License only. Everyone already has that right
(minus the BC math junk), and we are no different in that respect than
anyone else. (It's forking the code, but when we fork the code,
the dual-licensed version will simply die unless someone else picks it
up and continues on with it.)
Changing the PHP License in any way for a future release will require
the permission of all of the various code contributors. This could be
avoided in the future by adding the "or any future version of the
license" clause similar to what the GPL and NPL have. There shouldn't
be any need to define serious contributer.
(The usual "I am not a lawyer" disclaimer applies.)
Jim
Zeev Suraski wrote:
>
> 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
Thread (21 messages)