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Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 7:01 pm
by shiflett
arborint wrote:I don't think anyone is calling for the framework to be licensed under the GPL.
Sorry, you're right. I misunderstood.
arborint wrote:I find your and Andi's comments a little troubling because they needlessly cause a negative reaction.
I don't mean to cause a negative reaction. I just didn't read carefully enough.

Hopefully my comments are less troubling due to the fact that I have nothing at all to do with the license. :-) But, from my experience, GPL is the problem with compatibility and not the other way around.

Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 7:54 pm
by Roja
shiflett wrote:But, from my experience, GPL is the problem with compatibility and not the other way around.
There are certainly two sides (at least) to every story, and you can take that position.

However, the PHP License has caused licensing problems for Debian, for GPL programmers (for years now), MySQL, the list goes on.

Now, each of those are generally involving the GPL, but the point is, the incompatibility is widespread, well-known, well-discussed, and Zend chose to ignore every single one of those issues that have occurred over the last four years.

Even if you ignore all of that, making the claim that it's the GPL that has the problem ignores the legal realities of the licenses themselves. The PHP License is actually MORE restrictive in many ways than the GPL. The PHP License requires you to either include php itself in your app (!?), or *lie* and state that it does:
6. Redistributions of any form whatsoever must retain the following
acknowledgment:
"This product includes PHP, freely available from
<http://www.php.net/>".
Tell me again how the GPL is the one that is broken?

Take a serious look at statements like those before insulting the GPL community, which has done its homework, and is listening to serious legal issues and comments to develop a new version. Compare and contrast to Zend embracing a broken license after years of causing problems for every GPL developer that wants to use a PEAR package.

Now, in the case of the Zend Framework License, the new section 6 is considerably more reasonable.

However, section 3 puts trademark restrictions on the enduser (that can be enforced through other means, and don't belong in a copyright license). That makes it legally, and fundamentally incompatible with the GPL.

Its not the GPL that has the problem - its the ZFL that does.

Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 8:50 pm
by evilmonkey
Can someone explain what the heck a framework is (from a PHP standpoint)? What does it allow me to do that I couldn't do with PHP already?

Cheers!

Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 9:09 pm
by neophyte
Every application has to do certain things: database interactions, validation, form requests and so forth. A framework is basically a library of code with these common elements that developers can use to speed up development time.

Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 10:41 pm
by feyd
There's the possibility of dual licensing. One under something open source, and one under closed source. MySQL's licensing systems for instance.

Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 10:53 pm
by neophyte
Hmm the nice thing about GPL is you don't have to be a lawyer to understand it and you don't have to hire one to write a custom document to deal with a bazillion different open source licenses.

Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 1:53 pm
by Christopher
It should be noted that despite some early FUD (such as posted here an elsewhere) the license for the Zend Framework has been changed to a BSD license. That makes the ZF compatible with GPL code. The common sense arguments of people like Roja prevailed -- and the PHP community is the better for it.

As of this writing the ZF is at version 0.1.3 and public access to the source repository is also available to grab the latest code. While many of the components are maturing nicely, the core controller framework appears stagnant, perhaps awaiting some internal changes and additions. I am holding off trying to do much with it until they (hopefully) make some improvements.

Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 3:03 pm
by Roja
arborint wrote:It should be noted that despite some early FUD (such as posted here an elsewhere) the license for the Zend Framework has been changed to a BSD license. That makes the ZF compatible with GPL code. The common sense arguments of people like Roja prevailed -- and the PHP community is the better for it.
Holy cow! I didn't hear about that!

AWESOME! Thank you SO much for updating this thread with the new info. Now I get to dive into their framework. Yummy! New code!

Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 3:54 pm
by Christopher
The announcement by Andi Gutmans is here. I see that the new license is in the repository so will be in the next release.