Metaphone integration into PHP3 - license issues

From: Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 20:42:30 +0000
Subject: Metaphone integration into PHP3 - license issues
Groups: php.dev 
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hi (see conversation on bottom),

i got all the metaphone stuff in "place" - but i think i cannot commit
until we sort this license stuff out.

- what is our approach to plain-GPLed software?
- should we have a configure-switch --enable-gpl (sounds funny)?
- what do we do with windows builds?

metaphone is only ~250 lines of code so we could ignore it (not put it
into php) or rewrite it.

i'm really sorry and i do not want to start a lengthly thread - but i
think we're in a similar situation with the bcmath thingie (which is
included in the win32 build - so the win32 is "strictly" GPL?)

dont get me wrong: i love to write software, and i would prefer not to
think about this kind of issues, but obviously we have to!

so, what is our plan?

tc

PS:  actually i don't like the "requires written permission" bla bla stuff
in the php-license too much - i've spend a good few hours/nights/weekends
on php internal stuff, and nobody has to ask me (i couldn't care less)!

Thies C. Arntzen                 "One Big-Mac, Small Fries and a Coke!"
Digital Collections             Phone +49 40 235350 Fax +49 40 23535180
Hammerbrookstr. 93                              20097 Hamburg / Germany

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 14:52:16 -0400
From: Michael G Schwern <[email protected]>
To: Thies C. Arntzen <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Metaphone integration into PHP3 (fwd)

On Wed, Jun 23, 1999 at 05:05:38PM +0200, Thies C. Arntzen wrote:
> hi, i've wrote the module that uses your Metaphone code.. works great.
> 
> problem is now, that people using php3 can choose which license they want:
>
<snicker-snatch> 
>
> and we don't want to include code in the "standard" distribution which
> doesn't allow us in the future to do so.
> 
> i've included the php3-license, please send me mail if you feel
> comfortable with it - than i will go ahead and put the metaphone stuff
> into the next php release.

No, I'm sorry but I don't like this license.  Particularly this part:

>   1. Commercial redistribution of larger works derived from, or 
>      works which bundle PHP, requires written permission from the
>      PHP Development Team.  You may charge a fee for the physical
>      act of transferring a copy, and must make it clear that the
>      fee being charged is for the distribution, and not for the
>      software itself.  You may, at your option, offer warranty
>      protection in exchange for a fee.

What's the philosophy behind the PHP license?  Smells like shareware.

You should probably split your distribution into a core PHP'd
distribution and a seperate GPL'd set of packages.  Or, if you're
interested in making some $dough$ off of PHP, you could do something
like what MySQL does: seperate licenses for Microsoft (shareware
license) and non-Microsoft (free license) operating systems.  A
"sheep tax".

But, like I said, I want to see the code get used, and I don't want
licensing to get in the way.  That's kinda the point of free software.
There's gotta be a way to resolve this.  Perhaps you could pick
through the Artistic License (being looser than GPL) and see if it and
the PHP license can live together?

-- 

Michael G Schwern                                           [email protected]
                    http://www.pobox.com/~schwern
     /(?:(?:(1)[.-]?)?\(?(\d{3})\)?[.-]?)?(\d{3})[.-]?(\d{4})(x\d+)?/i




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