Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:103869
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <DM6PR02MB5594CCAE223187931678ED8CAC960@DM6PR02MB5594.namprd02.prod.outlook.com>
References: <CAF+90c9+g7k8Oq4ZtTm1mzkx0gwBJsu=2Yvto4rZeuqTusCeLQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <DM6PR02MB5594CCAE223187931678ED8CAC960@DM6PR02MB5594.namprd02.prod.outlook.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2019 18:58:53 +0100
Message-ID: <CACDmYyf208Sp3ZigumKk2nMxiewB1HP4MQKq4xWaLAAaLbFUjA@mail.gmail.com>
To: Zeev Suraski <zeev@zend.com>
Cc: Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com>, PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Simplify license headers
From: legale.legale@gmail.com (Legale Legage)

Intellectual rights include:
non-property rights (right to authorship, right to author's name, etc.);
property rights (exclusive rights or copyright);

A very interesting question appears:
Who own the copyright for the PHP source code?

Is Nikita right when he says that the copyright on PHP belongs to all
the co-authors who contributed to the development?

Best regards,
Ruslan

On 28/01/2019, Zeev Suraski <zeev@zend.com> wrote:
>
>> I would like to make two changes to this header:
>>
>> 1. Change "PHP Version 7" line to just "PHP", to avoid the necessity of
>> updating this for
>> new major versions. I don't think the version information here is
>> particularly useful to
>> anybody.
>
> I don't mind that much, but I don't see any issue with keeping it the way it
> is either.  It does look nicer the way it is now IMHO, and the cost
> associated with changing it twice a decade is, well, not very substantial.
>
>> 2. Remove the "Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group" line. Apart from
>> requiring a
>> yearly update, this line is actually complete misinformation, because the
>> PHP group
>> does *not* hold the copyright for the PHP source code. This would require
>> a copyright
>> assignment agreement on behalf of all contributors, which we do not
>> collect.
>>
>> We could also just drop the header entirely, I'm just proposing these two
>> changes as
>> the path of least resistance towards getting the "annoying" parts
>> removed.
>
> I'm no lawyer, but I do believe a case can be made for claiming that a
> person putting code into files with the header 'Copyright (c) XYZ', is in
> fact implicitly assigning copyright to XYZ.  So while it's not as strong as
> an explicit copyright assignment, and while it was never tested in court
> (and hopefully never will be) - I do see value in keeping it.  I certainly
> don't see a reason to change it after 20 years where it didn't seem to
> bother anybody, unless there's a strong reason to do that, which currently I
> don't see.
>
> Zeev
>