[Owncloud] owncloud is AGPL licensed but contains numerous instances of PHP license

[Frank Karlitschek]

On 20.09.2011, at 21:47, Klaas Freitag wrote:

> On Dienstag, 20. September 2011 14:36:26 Frank Karlitschek wrote:
>> Hi Andrej,
>> 
>> thats great! I look forward to see ownCloud in openSUSE. :-)
>> 
>> ownCloud is AGPL. But we also ship other libraries in our tar file because
>> it makes installation easier for our users. Everything is free software of
>> course. I hope it´s not a problem for you that we have a mixture of
>> licenses here.
> The thing is that AGPL is not compatible with GPL2 and also not with GPL3 (?),
> check http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html for details, I am also not an 
> expert. But the report below has some details.
> 
> It is really important to get that sorted to have it included into Factory.
> 
> regards,
> 
> Klaas

Hmm, this seams to be an interesting problem.
I´m not an expert in licenses but I found this link:
http://pear.php.net/manual/en/faq.devs.php

It seams that at least the pear/php people seams to belief that this is not a problem.

It seams that the real question is if shipping unmodified PEAR code together with ownCloud is aggregation or linking.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation
Aggregation would be O.K. but linking not.

Is it O.K. for you if we just package the PEAR files independently from the rest of ownCloud and make it a dependency?
But if this is the case than it´s an indication that all we do is shipping PEAR files as aggregation of relatively independent part.

What do you think?

Cheers
Frank


>> On 20.09.2011, at 14:26, asemen at novell.com wrote:
>>> Hi as I am trying to add the owncloud package to openSUSE Factory did
>>> run into some AGPL vs. PHP GPL-3.0 license problems.
>>> 
>>> Could you help me on this?
>>> 
>>> Please tell me under which license owncloud could should be published.
>>> 
>>> Best Regards
>>> 
>>> Andrej Semen
>>> 
>>> 
>>> see also bug report
>>> https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=719155
>>> 
>>> 
>>> paste from from bug report comment #0
>>> 
>>> The AGPL-3.0 and the GPL-3.0 are compatible but the AGPL-3.0 and the
>>> GPL-2.0(+)
>>> are not, meaning that for the purposes of opencloud, we need to treat all
>>> instances of GPL-2.0+ as GPL-3.0 code. Then, the compatibility issue
>>> does not
>>> arise.
>>> 
>>> However, the PHP-3.0.1 license is compatible with neither the AGPL-3.0
>>> nor with
>>> the GPL-3.0. This is (according to the FSF:
>>> https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#PHP-3.01) because of the
>>> limitations that the PHP license puts on the use of the name "PHP" in
>>> derived
>>> products.
>>> 
>>> At least the following files in owncloud (there are repetitions in file
>>> names
>>> here, I haven't looked to see if the files contain the same code) are
>>> licensed
>>> under the PHP 3.0 license. As such, according to the FSF these files are
>>> incompatible with the (GPL|AGPL)-3.0 licensed files in owncloud.
>>> 
>>> I suggest checking to see if and how such PHP licensed files are used (if
>>> at all). If they are used and are "mission critical" we should
>>> definitely ask upstream if they are aware of the issue and intend to
>>> address it.
>>> 
>>> owncloud._/3rdparty/PEAR/Autoloader.php
>>> owncloud._/3rdparty/PEAR/Command.php
>>> owncloud._/3rdparty/PEAR/Command/Auth.php
>>> owncloud._/3rdparty/PEAR/Command/Build.php
>>> owncloud._/3rdparty/PEAR/Command/Common.php
>>> owncloud._/3rdparty/PEAR/Command/Config.php
>>> owncloud._/3rdparty/PEAR/Command/Mirror.php
>>> owncloud._/3rdparty/PEAR/Command/Registry.php
>>> owncloud._/3rdparty/PEAR/Command/Remote.php
>>> owncloud._/3rdparty/PEAR/Config.php
>>> owncloud._/3rdparty/PEAR/Frontend/CLI.php
>>> owncloud._/3rdparty/PEAR/Packager.php
>>> owncloud._/3rdparty/PEAR/Remote.php
>>> owncloud._/3rdparty/System.php
>>> owncloud._/3rdparty/XML/Parser.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PEAR/Autoloader.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PEAR/Command.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PEAR/Command/Auth.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PEAR/Command/Build.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PEAR/Command/Common.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PEAR/Command/Config.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PEAR/Command/Mirror.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PEAR/Command/Registry.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PEAR/Command/Remote.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PEAR/Config.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PEAR/Frontend/CLI.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PEAR/Packager.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PEAR/Remote.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PHPUnit.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PHPUnit/Assert.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PHPUnit/GUI/Gtk.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PHPUnit/GUI/HTML.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PHPUnit/GUI/SetupDecorator.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PHPUnit/RepeatedTest.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PHPUnit/Skeleton.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PHPUnit/TestCase.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PHPUnit/TestDecorator.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PHPUnit/TestFailure.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PHPUnit/TestListener.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PHPUnit/TestResult.php
>>> owncloud/inc/PHPUnit/TestSuite.php
>>> owncloud/inc/packages/DB.xml
>>> owncloud/inc/packages/Log.xml
>>> owncloud/inc/packages/Mail.xml
>>> owncloud/owncloud/3rdparty/PEAR/Autoloader.php
>>> owncloud/owncloud/3rdparty/PEAR/Command.php
>>> owncloud/owncloud/3rdparty/PEAR/Command/Auth.php
>>> owncloud/owncloud/3rdparty/PEAR/Command/Build.php
>>> owncloud/owncloud/3rdparty/PEAR/Command/Common.php
>>> owncloud/owncloud/3rdparty/PEAR/Command/Config.php
>>> owncloud/owncloud/3rdparty/PEAR/Command/Mirror.php
>>> owncloud/owncloud/3rdparty/PEAR/Command/Registry.php
>>> owncloud/owncloud/3rdparty/PEAR/Command/Remote.php
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Owncloud mailing list
>>> Owncloud at kde.org
>>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/owncloud
>> 
>> Frank Karlitschek
>> karlitschek at kde.org
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Owncloud mailing list
>> Owncloud at kde.org
>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/owncloud

Frank Karlitschek
karlitschek at kde.org