[License-review] Request for Legacy Approval of PHP License 3.01

[Ben Ramsey]

Rationale:

According to the commit history[1] for its LICENSE file, the PHP
License 3.0 was published on July 21, 2002. I've been unable to find
any historical discussions related to the approval of the PHP License
by the OSI, but the license has been listed on the OSI website as an
approved license since at least 2006[2][3].

On January 1, 2006, a slight modification was made to the PHP License
for clarification[4]. As a result of this change, the license number
was bumped to 3.01 and has remained at this version number ever since.

The 3.01 version, however, was never added to the OSI list of approved
licenses, and this causes a problem for some organizations who mandate
the use of software with OSI-approved licenses.

A recent post[5] to the PHP General mailing list raised this issue:

> My team’s ability to use the phpdbg utility hinges on OSI approval of
> its license. Language at https://www.php.net/license/ indicates that
> the PHP 3.01 license is OSI approved, but OSI disagrees;
> https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical shows approval only of
> the PHP 3.0 license. (The fact that 3.0 and 3.01 are substantively
> identical is no use to us at all.)

I am submitting this formal request for review on behalf of the PHP
internals[6][7].


Proliferation category:

Non-reusable licenses

This is the category under which the current PHP License 3.0 falls, as
an OSI-approved license.


Please find attached the full text of the PHP License 3.01. It is also
available at https://www.php.net/license/3_01.txt



[1]: https://github.com/php/php-src/commits/master/LICENSE
[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20060407033057/http://www.opensource.org/licenses/php.php
[3]: https://opensource.org/licenses/PHP-3.0
[4]: https://github.com/php/php-src/commit/56567d31b331d3ab7814b36867579116eb14da86
[5]: https://news-web.php.net/php.general/327010
[6]: https://news-web.php.net/php.internals/108847
[7]: https://news-web.php.net/php.internals/108848



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