Hi, As you may already be aware, a Debian package of your PEAR Services_Weather module has been created for distribution as a part of Debian (and thereafter all of its derivatives). Unfortunately, it was discovered that the PHP License under which Services_Weather is released is problematic for software other than PHP itself. This problem has already been brought before the PEAR community, and is being actively worked on. If you are interested, you can read about the problems with the license (when applied to software other than PHP) and some of the ensuing discussion at:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/08/msg00188.html or in one of the PEAR mailing lists which were also involved in the discussion. To give you a sense of how uncompatible the PHP License is for the release of software other than PHP, please consider point (6) of version 3.0: "Redistributions of any form whatsoever must retain the following acknowledgment: 'This product includes PHP, freely available from <http://www.php.net/>'." While this is perfectly reasonable when distributing PHP itself, it would be silly to think that you really expect us to only distribute Services_Weather bundled with the entire PHP distribution. :-) The PEAR team is currently working on how they would like to address this issue: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/08/msg00238.html But in the meantime, Debian is forced to remove PHP Licensed packages (except of course for PHP itself) in order avoid violating the license. We would, however, love to keep Services_Weather in Debian if you are able to change the licence to something more compatible with your package. The BSD License is quite similar to the PHP License. In fact, the first two clauses of the PHP License were drawn from the BSD License. You can find an example BSD License at: http://www.debian.org/misc/bsd.license Note that the third point is optional, and is often left out. We hope that you'll be able to migrate Services_Weather to a license that is not specific to PHP itself, in order to allow us to distribute it in Debian. Thanks for your understanding, and please feel free to contact us with any further questions that you have regarding this matter. Charles -- The cream One hears The most of now Comes from a jar Not from a cow Burma-Shave http://burma-shave.org/jingles/1938/the_cream
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