[pkg-php-pear] Bug#752654: Sources licensed under PHP License and not being PHP are not distributable

[Ondřej Surý]

Hi everyone,

I should have done this earlier before cloning the bugs, so here's
some more background on the bugs filled.

I did have a quite long and extensive chat with FTP Masters
and our conclusion was that PHP License (any version) is
suitable only for software that comes directly from "PHP Group",
that basically means only PHP (src:php5) itself.

We have several options to do here:

1. Ask upstream to re-license the software to different free license
- BSD or MIT/Expat is the closest one.

2. Show that the software in question does come from "PHP Group",
f.e. software based on src:php5 sources. Most notable example is
src:php-json which is copy of ext/json/ adapted to libjson-c-dev
instead of the included JSON-IS-EVIL library.

3. We remove the source packages from Debian.

One more note: PHP is *not* compatible with GPL[1]. If you have
sources that combine PHP-licensed source with GPL-licenced
source the result is not distributable. That includes linking GPL
library to PHP licenced source (e.g. libreadline as most notable
example of GPL library).

While doing the copyright research I have found two such examples
and Ansgar was that kind that he filled: #752625 and #752627

Full list of bugs filled under this:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=ondrej%40debian.org&tag=php-license-3.01

If you feel to dispute this please take your *well-formed* and
*well-thought*
arguments to debian-legal.

Ondrej
  [1] <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#PHP-3.01>
-- 
Ondřej Surý <ondrej at sury.org>
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