Why do people write licenses with whole paragraphs WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS LIKE THIS?
Prevents any dispute over the significance of a certain word or phrase being capitalized vs not.
RFC: PHP license update
71–80 of 91 posts
Re: RFC: PHP license update
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is not what the article says. It doesn't mention "or later" at all? And reading the full license text, I don't see "or later" there either?
The wording to search for is, "You may also choose to use such covered code under the terms of any subsequent version of the license".
Ah cheers. Don't understand why that's not mentioned at all in the length section on changing the license?
Re: RFC: PHP license update
#73I suppose my concern with not getting permission from all contributors is that a bad faith contributor could make life hard. For those S signs with a stripe, or just out of spite. For better or worse, in systems like the US anyone can sue anyone for any reason and everyone is expected to carry their own costs, which is why everyone is so paranoid and covers their ass with three tanks worth of metal. Aside: "Meanwhile…
> Meanwhile, Richard Stallman, author of the GPL and founder of the FSF, had significant disagreements with the PHP project over their use of the GPL, so the PHP project discontinued the dual-licensing approach, removing the GPL license as an option The main link that cites is primarily about the MySQL license change to GPL and the impact on PHP licensing of tha. I also do not understand why anyone would drop the GPL…
> I also do not understand why anyone would drop the GPL because Stallman does not like their licensing.
Because he can be so obnoxious that people want to sever all ties with him and anything that has to do with him so that they never ever have to talk to him ever again in any capacity.
This goes back a long time. For example Keith Packard on why X11 isn't GPL (from https://youtu.be/cj02_UeUnGQ?t=1705):
> Richard Stallman, the author of the GPL and quite an interesting individual lived at 5405 DEC square, he lived up on the sixth floor I think? Had an office up there; he did not have an apartment. And we knew him extremely well. He was a challenging individual to get along with. He would regularly come down to our offices and ask us, or kind of rail at us, for not using the GPL.
> This did not make a positive impression on me; this was my first interaction with Richard directly and I remember thinking at the time, “this guy is a little, you know, I’m not interesting in talking to him because he’s so challenging to work with.”
> And so, we should have listened to him then but we did not because, we know him too well, I guess, and met him as well.
There are many anecdotes like this over the years from many people, often people who in broad lines actually agree with Stallman.
Re: RFC: PHP license update
#74FYI in case anyone were wondering: Meta uses Hack, not PHP. (Hack's packaging, documentation, and availability suck because there's no performance review "impact" to making things better that no one inside Meta sees. Plus, there's job security in knowledge hoarding.) Licensing: Meta and Google[1], and likely Microsoft, Apple, and most other megacorps explicitly forbid any use of AGPL software because it cannot be pro…
> So if you never want megacorps or anyone who runs a business to ever use your code, choose AGPL. Plenty of businesses run AGPL software (e.g. Grafana, Mastodon or Mattermost). Fewer run AGPL software for external paying customers. As a developer, I care about the freedom of my users ; I don’t much care about the paranoia of a megacorp who wants to restrict the freedom of its customers.
but you don't care enough to let your users choose to pay some other business to host it for them
Re: RFC: PHP license update
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
In other words, if you're an open source startup and want to avoid being AWS'd, choose dual AGPL + commercial (with IP transfer CLAs).
Which is what Grafana essentially did, and it's going great (as a company and as a suite of products, their stuff is incredibly good).
but also kind of sucks for users since you can't reuse the graph widgets elsewhere... which is why https://perses.dev/ is now a thing
Re: RFC: PHP license update
#76Why do people write licenses with whole paragraphs WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS LIKE THIS?
From the Uniform Commercial Code:
"'Conspicuous', with reference to a term, means so written, displayed, or presented that, based on the totality of the circumstances, a reasonable person against which it is to operate ought to have noticed it."
What are some of the ways you can tell if a term in a legal document is conspicuous? One of the ways mentioned in the UCC:
"a heading in capitals equal to or greater in size than the surrounding text"
So apparently the thinking is that if you make everything in the license all caps, it is all a conspicuous term, and thus a court will be convinced that a reasonable person ought to have noticed it.
Re: RFC: PHP license update
#77Why do people write licenses with whole paragraphs WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS LIKE THIS?
US law says that warranty/liability disclaimers need to be "conspicuous". Making it ALL CAPS is the easiest way to do that in plain text.
Re: RFC: PHP license update
#78FYI in case anyone were wondering: Meta uses Hack, not PHP. (Hack's packaging, documentation, and availability suck because there's no performance review "impact" to making things better that no one inside Meta sees. Plus, there's job security in knowledge hoarding.) Licensing: Meta and Google[1], and likely Microsoft, Apple, and most other megacorps explicitly forbid any use of AGPL software because it cannot be pro…
Plenty of big businesses will use AGPL software ... because you can dual license. AGPL lets you claim "open source" while still being able to pretty universally charge for the software's use via your commercial licensing option.
Re: RFC: PHP license update
#79FYI in case anyone were wondering: Meta uses Hack, not PHP. (Hack's packaging, documentation, and availability suck because there's no performance review "impact" to making things better that no one inside Meta sees. Plus, there's job security in knowledge hoarding.) Licensing: Meta and Google[1], and likely Microsoft, Apple, and most other megacorps explicitly forbid any use of AGPL software because it cannot be pro…
I thought it's using Go nowadays.
Weren't so many packages rewritten in Go?
Re: RFC: PHP license update
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is what Grafana essentially did, and it's going great (as a company and as a suite of products, their stuff is incredibly good).
but also kind of sucks for users since you can't reuse the graph widgets elsewhere... which is why https://perses.dev/ is now a thing
looks like a poorer version grafana, with a worse license?
Also grafana has "observability as code" since release 12: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/whatsnew/whats-new-i...
And it seems there used to be something similar from earlier as well: https://grafana.com/blog/2022/12/06/a-complete-guide-to-mana...