PHP License Finally Approved By OSI

O'Reilly's new news site is reporting that PHP's new license, v3.0, has finally been approved by the OSI as meeting the open source definition. There was a small technical issue that prevented it in previous versions.

From the article

[trompete]

6. Redistributions of any form whatsoever must retain the following acknowledgment: "This product includes PHP, freely available from ".

I write stuff in PHP, and I never include that when I distribute my source code. Do any other developers ignore this clause?

Re:From the article

[gl4ss]

well.. i didn't rtfa..

but have you thouhgt about that the php license is for the php runtime system, NOT for code you write _in_ php language?

(i'm just pulling this out of my hat/ass)

Re:From the article

[trompete]

There really wasn't much of an article. It was just an overview of the license. Upon futher inspection, I agree with you that this only applies if you extend the PHP source code, not products written in PHP.
Thanks!

Re:From the article

[mbadolato]

It has to be the case. The article also states that you can not use PHP in the name of a product, which wuold mean a lot of free products (IE phpMyAdmin) would need to change their names, if the rule in fact applied to products that use PHP as the language.

Re:From the article

[rRaminrodt]

After giving the licence a quick look-over, I'm pretty sure that applies to the language, not to things you write in the language.

Re:MODS - lay off the Redundant

[lauterm]

I didn't know you could moderate as Anonymous Coward. But seriously, you make a good point. You can post at almost exactly the same time as someone else and get moderated redundant. Of course the purpose of moderating redundant is to prevent other users from having to read the same thing twice. Please don't take it personally. Its happened to most of us at some point or another.

Funny that

[olivermoffat]

opensource.org has been running PHP all this time [netcraft.com]

Re:Funny that

[blab]

Haha I'm the webmaster. It was such a technicality that php wasn't "open source" that it was funny. In spirit, PHP has always been open source. The license just needed a formal tweak.

OSDN is funnier

[ciaran_o_riordan]

Nah, the Open Source Developers Network using the proprietary SourceForge code with IBMs proprietary DB2 as it's back end is funnier :)

Ciaran O'Riordan

*sigh of relief*

[Eneff]

I am now authorized by my masters to use PHP.

What technicallity?

[Gaima]

So what was this small technical issue that was fixed?
The "article" wasn't exactly informative.

Re:What technicallity?

[one9nine]

SCO claimed they had the rights to recursive acronyms. It's all straightened out now.

What was the technical issue?

[Magic Thread]

I'm interested to know what this technical issue was, because the PHP license 3.0 is listed on the FSF site as a free software license [gnu.org] already (and the page hasn't been modified since August 16). Free software licenses are automatically open source as well, aren't they? I suppose the FSF could have just approved the new version faster, but then I'd expect to see some sort of note indicating that the old version was not free software. No such note exists.

Whoa....

[Hanji]

A software license that can fit in one screen in a readable font?!?!??!?

I *knew* I liked those open-source guys!

Re:Whoa....

[Suppafly]

great isn't it? i wonder if the gpl wouldn't be more understandable and less likely to be violated if it were as concise.

The QingPL

[yerricde]

If you want a copyleft license that fits within an 80x25 box, try the Qing Public License [inbox.org].

Re:The QingPL

[Suppafly]

wow, thats awesome.. everyone should use that..

Re:Whoa....

[WoTG]

I'll take the GPL license for readability any day over just about any commercial license. It's not that long really, 2-3 pages?

The average EULA for say, Windows, or even some websites is easily twice that in length - and often squished into awful little scrolling windows that make it impossible to read.

It's a Free Software license

[ciaran_o_riordan]

From FSF [fsf.org]s license list [gnu.org]:

This license is used by most of PHP4. It is a non-copyleft free software license which is incompatible with the GNU GPL.

We recommend that you not use this license for anything except PHP add-ons.


Ciaran O'Riordan