Re: [Phpgroupware-developers] PHP3 support - Why ?

[Dan Kuykendall (Seek3r)]

address@hidden wrote:
> 
> Hi
> 
> Pardon the stupid question, but why continue to support an old version that
> is long out of date. Netcraft surveys show PHP to be the number one Apache
> Module and all **IX installations of the last two years that have Apache
> have been deploying PHP4 builds or instructions to build with Version 4.

The reason is the license change between PHP3 and PHP4. PHP3 was under
the GPL but parts of PHP4 are under license similair to the old QPL
license and is not considered "Free". 

From
http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses

The PHP License, Version 2.02. 
     This license is used by most of PHP4, but one important part of
PHP4, the Zend optimizer, uses a different and worse license: the QPL. 

     This is a non-copyleft free software license with practical
problems like those of the original BSD license, including
incompatibility with the GNU GPL. 

     PHP3 is not under this license. PHP3 is disjunctively dual-licensed
with the GNU GPL. Thus, while PHP4 (which is covered only by the PHP
2.02 License) is still free software, we encourage you to use and make
improvements to only PHP3. That way, we can have an active version of
PHP whose license is compatible with the GPL. If you are interested in
helping maintain an active version of PHP3, please contact the GNU
Volunteer Coordinators <address@hidden>.