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Re: The Future of PHP [message #171016 is a reply to message #170990] Wed, 15 December 2010 02:51 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Adam Harvey is currently offline  Adam Harvey
Messages: 25
Registered: September 2010
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Junior Member
On Mon, 13 Dec 2010 23:57:28 -0500, Jerry Stuckle wrote:
> On 12/13/2010 10:42 PM, Adam Harvey wrote:
>> The Zend Engine is the core runtime engine that parses and executes
>> your PHP code. As noted, the copyright to that is owned by Zend
>> Technologies, but as with the rest of PHP, it's made available under a
>> liberal open source licence.
>>
>> In short, there's no real way PHP as a whole could be bought by a
>> company à la Java, because it's not owned by a singular entity as it
>> is, and all of the components are licensed under an Apache-like
>> licence.
>
> No, but without an engine, PHP is pretty worthless.

Absolutely, but it's not an actual problem, because:

> Of course, if someone ever bought out Zend and terminated everyone's PHP
> license, a bunch of programmers could spend the next 3-4 years putting
> together another engine and getting it to run. But by then PHP would be
> dead anyway.

The Zend Engine License (available in Zend/LICENSE within the PHP source
tree) explicitly deals with this problem. To quote section 4 of said
licence:

4. Zend Technologies Ltd. may publish revised and/or new versions
of the license from time to time. Each version will be given a
distinguishing version number.
Once covered code has been published under a particular version
of the license, you may always continue to use it under the
terms of that version. You may also choose to use such covered
code under the terms of any subsequent version of the license
published by Zend Technologies Ltd. No one other than Zend
Technologies Ltd. has the right to modify the terms applicable
to covered code created under this License.

The important bit is that covered code can always be used under the
version of the Zend Engine License. Even in the incredibly unlikely
situation that Zend were to get bought out and development of the Zend
Engine was closed, the most recent version of the Zend Engine included in
the PHP source tree would remain open source, and I dare say that
development would continue on that open source version of the Zend Engine
regardless: much of the work that occurs on the engine comes from
developers who aren't employed by Zend anyway.

tl;dr: Can't happen. Relax.

Adam
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