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To: Sara Golemon <pollita@php.net>, Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com>
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Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2017 16:33:02 +0200
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Extensions License
From: johannes@schlueters.de (Johannes =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Schl=FCter?=)

On Do, 2017-06-15 at 08:29 -0400, Sara Golemon wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 5:06 AM, Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > 
> > On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 8:23 AM, Remi Collet <remi@fedoraproject.or
> > g> wrote:
> > > 
> > > All extensions in php-src are PHP 3.01 Licensed
> > > (libs may, of course, have different license)
> > > 
> > > Is there any strong rule about this ?
> > > Or is it OK to have a BSD Licensed extension ?
> > > 
> > > Context: see sodium PR
> > I think we should allow BSD/MIT licenses, as they are compatible
> > with and
> > less restrictive than the PHP license. TBH, the PHP license seems
> > somewhat
> > dubious when applied to extensions, as most of the additional
> > clauses are
> > simply not applicable (extensions do not bundle the Zend Engine and
> > extensions have no control over the PHP group or the PHP name).
> > 
> I agree that BSD/MIT being more permissive is probably fine as far as
> licensing goes. In fact, there are bundled libraries in ext/*/ which
> are (obviously) not PHP licensed, so drawing an arbitrary line at one
> point in ext as opposed to another is a bit... weird.  Obviously we
> need to be very careful about *which* licenses are permitted, but
> BSD/MIT feel like no-brainers to me.

There is a point for this: We copy and paste code between extensions.
If different extensions use different copyrights doing this "correctly"
becomes complicated.  If all PHP-related code is using PHP License and
copyright by The PHP Group this becomes easier.

Also mind that php-src extensions are our primary resource on how to
use PHP extensions and "look how others are doing it" is a common
strategy.

Imagine sodium being the example for using some newly created PHP API.
If that is copied into ext/foobar, foobar has to licensed with
additional "Copyright (c) 2013-2017, Frank Denis", now somebody takes
something from foobar and moves it to main/, now main/ has to add
"Copyright (c) 2013-2017, Frank Denis, Copyright 2018-2019, John Doe"
then suddenly all main/ consumers have to cite that copyright ... 

Stuff like ext/date/lib is not PHP-specific and an independent module.
Similar ext/sqlite/libsqlite or ext/gd/libgd.

johannes