[Xapian-discuss] Re: [Swig-devel] license issue

[William S Fulton]

Richard Palmer originally added the php module. In the original 
submission he had the code to generate the Copyright into the wrapper 
file. You can view the original file that was committed into the SWIG 
cvs repository in the rel-1-3 branch: 
http://swig.cvs.sourceforge.net/swig/SWIG/Source/Modules1.1/php4.cxx?view=log&pathrev=rel-1-3

I've added Richard onto the list of recipients. Hopefully Richard's 
email address still works and he can explain:

1) Why the licencing was added?
2) What portions are subjected to the php licence?
3) Was the licencing a requirement for code that he obtained elsewhere 
or a licence he felt like using?

With regard to Sam's comment below about anything that uses php/zend 
header files being derived from php. I think someone at php needs to 
clarify this. Most projects that supply header files will apply an 
exception to usage of the header files and linking in. The classic 
example is the LGPL is applied in many cases where the project is GPL'd. 
For example the C++ runtime is LGPL'd and so usage is all permissive. If 
the phph licence does not allow all permissive usage of the header 
files, then it taints in the way that the GPL does, then we genuinely do 
have a problem. How about a new thread is raised and sent to 
license at php.net checking that usage of the php headers is / is not all 
permissive? If usage of the headers is all permissive, all we need to do 
understand Richard's motives and hopefully get his approval for removing 
the licence requirement he added as it could well have been a 
misunderstanding of the php licencing.

Below is the licence text that was originally added:

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| PHP version 4.0                                                      |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Copyright (c) 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 The PHP Group             |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| This source file is subject to version 2.02 of the PHP license,      |
| that is bundled with this package in the file LICENSE, and is        |
| available at through the world-wide-web at                           |
| http://www.php.net/license/2_02.txt.                                 |
| If you did not receive a copy of the PHP license and are unable to   |
| obtain it through the world-wide-web, please send a note to          |
| license at php.net so we can mail you a copy immediately.               |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Authors:                                                             |
|                                                                      |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+

William

Sam Liddicott wrote:
> You are probably right about the unnecessary strictness of the license of the generated code; but changing that will only make distribution of the xapian-php module source clearer.
> 
> However, despite the original bug report, the compiled php-xapian makes use of php/zend header files and structures and so is derived from it. It is this mechanism that most people confuse with linking, because linking (generally) requires knowledge of header files.
> 
> I've justnoticed that my messages to the swig list bounced so I  probably need to subscribe and re-send.
> 
> sam
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Olly Betts" <olly at survex.com>
> To: "Alexander Lind" <malte at webstay.org>
> Cc: "William S Fulton" <wsf at fultondesigns.co.uk>; swig-devel at lists.sourceforge.net; "Xapian Discussion" <xapian-discuss at lists.xapian.org>
> Sent: 23/08/07 04:30
> Subject: Re: [Xapian-discuss] Re: [Swig-devel] license issue
> 
> On Tue, Aug 21, 2007 at 06:53:03PM -0700, Alexander Lind wrote:
>> Now does this mean that the PHP bindings generated with SWIG are alright 
>> after all (ie does not violate the PHP license), or does it mean that 
>> they are not out of the woods yet, but that this can be fixed by just 
>> generating them in a different way?  Or neither?
> 
> There seems to be rather a lot of confusion and people talking at
> cross-purposes here.
> 
> Let's look at the original bug reported:
> 
> http://www.xapian.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=191
> 
> The issue which has been raised is this:
> 
>     Quotes from the conversation on IRC with Fedora developers :
>     "the problem i'm seeing is that xapian-bindings has bits of code that
>     are GPLv2+ and PHP"
>     "and it is merging them together into one .cc file and compiling _that_"
>     "except, the GPLv2 and PHP are incompatible"
>     "BOOM"
>     "tell upstream that they can't compile PHP code with GPL* code"
> 
> I believe they are referring to the fact that SWIG's PHP backend inserts
> licence boilerplate (for the PHP 2.02 licence) into the C/C++ code it
> generates.
> 
> I'm rather unclear on why it does this.  SWIG is supposed to be licensed
> under a permissive BSD-style licence.  This use of the PHP licence is
> not mentioned in the file "LICENCE", and the code generated doesn't seem
> to be taken from PHP that I can see.
> 
> I asked about this very issue in May 2006, but nobody responded then:
> 
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.programming.swig.devel/16167
> 
> If somebody can explain why this boilerplate is inserted, and what (if
> any) part of the generated code it actually applies to, then we should
> be able to replace any such code with unencumbered code and resolve this
> issue.
> 
> Cheers,
>     Olly
> 
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