MESSAGE
| DATE | 2002-05-06 |
| FROM | Jonathan Bober
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] php license
|
I thought that there was something wrong about the statement that PHP is
not Free Software. PHP is Free Software, just under a "bad" Free
Software License.
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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 .
and then the QPL
The Q Public License (QPL), Version 1.0.
This is a non-copyleft free software license which is incompatible
with the GNU GPL. It also causes major practical inconvenience, because
modified sources can only be distributed as patches.
We recommend that you avoid using the QPL for anything that you
write, and use QPL-covered software packages only when absolutely
necessary. However, this avoidance no longer applies to Qt itself, since
Qt is now also released under the GNU GPL.
Since the QPL is incompatible with the GNU GPL, you cannot take a
GPL-covered program and QPL-covered program and link them together, no
matter how.
However, if you have written a program that uses QPL-covered library
(called FOO), and you want to release your program under the GNU GPL,
you can easily do that. You can resolve the conflict for your program by
adding a notice like this to it:
As a special exception, you have permission to link this program
with the FOO library and distribute executables, as long as you
follow the requirements of the GNU GPL in regard to all of the
software in the executable aside from FOO.
You can do this, legally, if you are the copyright holder for the
program. Add it in the source files, after the notice that says the
program is covered by the GNU GPL.
____________________________
New Yorker Linux Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
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