Pierre Joy has already asked, and I have agreed to switch Date to the
BSD license. I believe the other developers involved with the
Date/TimeZone code have also agreed.
If there is anything else I need to do, please let me know.
thanks,
baba
Charles Fry wrote:
Hi,
As you may already be aware, a Debian package of your PEAR Date 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 Date 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
Date 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 Date 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 Date 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
--
Baba Z Buehler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://BabaZ.com/ PGP KeyID: 0xA88A6D4C
"Those who are willing to sacrifice freedom for security deserve
neither." -Benjamin Franklin
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