Re: Question about PHP licencing for libvirt-php (php-libvirt for Fedora)

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On 03/10/2011 01:26 PM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 01:03:57PM +0100, Radek Hladik wrote:
Hi all,
Well, I agree that LGPLv2+ license would be better. We need to wait for
Lyre's and Radek's reply then.

   Unfortunately answer to this simple question is more complicated
than I would like. The project is "just" binding between two
projects. It means that there is no cutting edge algorithms and/or
programing methods used. So I prefer to use license that will allow
widespread use of the project and ensure that if someone needs some
additional function he/she will add them and share with others. But
would this show to be more restrictive I do not mind so much
lowering this requirement to be voluntary.
	On the other hand the project is binding two projects with
different licences together. And thats the part where it gets
complicated. The LGPL style licence would suit my ideas from last
paragraph. But on the PHP website (
http://www.php.net/license/contrib-guidelines-code.php ):

    * GPL or LGPL licensed code cannot be used as a basis for any derived work contributed to PHP.
    * Extensions which link GPL'd libraries will not be accepted.
    * Extensions which link to LGPL libraries will be strongly discouraged.
The discouragement of LGPL libraries is for stuff that is being contributed
into the core PHP project codebase. libvirt-php is a separate project, so
as long as the license are compatible from a legal POV we're fine.

The libvirt itself is under LGPL. When I was creating the spec file
I had to fill in some licence. And to be honest I was more focused
on getting the spec file working than on choosing the licence so I
just put PHP in there.
To summarize this: I do not mind to licence my code under any
version of LGPL. If you think that its better than PHP licence, then
its ok with me. I would not mind having it under PHP licence if it
would help to spread the project even for the cost of not requiring
to publish the changes.
And about the name. I do not mind changing it as for the Fedora or
because of the PHP restrictions. It is the same story, I started to
code the extension, I had to learn how to do it, etc... so I did not
solve the licencing issue and I did not notice that PHP has some
restrictions on naming...
IMHO, we should just go for  LGPLv2+, but as an alternative we could
also dual-license it, as  "LGPLv2+ or PHP" to make the PHP community
more comfortable with it.

Regards,
Daniel

Well, I'm thinking about the licensing thing here for the project and unfortunately it's not that easy unless we use the dual-license instead of PHP license. LGPLv2+ license could be good as well if appropriate however according to the Fedora Project naming scheme [1] we have to have the project starting with "php-" and therefore php-libvirt. I've been reading the PHP-License-3.01 as well at [2] which states something about not having "PHP" in it's name:

[quote]*
Q.* I've written a project in PHP that I'm going to release as open source, and I'd like to call it PHPTransmogrifier. Is that OK?

*A.* We cannot really stop you from using PHP in the name of your project unless you include any code from the PHP distribution, in which case you would be violating the license. See Clause 4 in the PHP License v3.01 <http://www.php.net/license/3_01.txt>. But we would really prefer if people would come up with their own names independent of the PHP name.

"Why?" you ask. You are only trying to contribute to the PHP community. That may be true, but by using the PHP name you are explicitly linking your efforts to those of the entire PHP development community and the years of work that has gone into the PHP project. Every time a flaw is found in one of the thousands of applications out there that call themselves "PHP-Something" the negative karma that generates reflects unfairly on the entire PHP project. We had nothing to do with PHP-Nuke, for example, and every bugtraq posting on that says "PHP" in it. Your particular project may in fact be the greatest thing ever, but we have to be consistent in how we handle these requests and we honestly have no way of knowing whether your project is actually the greatest thing ever.

So, please, pick a name that stands on its own merits. If your stuff is good, it will not take long to establish a reputation for yourselves. Look at Zope, for example, that is a framework for Python that doesn't have Python in the name. Smarty as well doesn't have PHP in the name and does quite well.
[/quote]

I don't know what should we do but I guess having the dual-licensing could be the best thing. We can't have the project name php-libvirt because of the PHP license :(

Michal

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:PHP#Naming_scheme
[2] http://www.php.net/license/index.php#faq-lic

--
Michal Novotny<minovotn@xxxxxxxxxx>, RHCE
Virtualization Team (xen userspace), Red Hat

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