Removal of (some) PHP related software from Debian

The Debian FTP masters have for quite a while a line in their reject FAQ about the PHP license. Despite that, quite a lot of PHP extensions were uploaded to the archive and accepted. Some are being managed/developed in PHP.net’s PECL website, and are done under the umbrella of the PHP Group, which is the group the PHP license is refers to. Over time, we started to see many more extension being developed outside of the PHP group (both technically with sites like github and copyright wise).  This is true to certain degree with the PHP.net’s PEAR  website which has software written in PHP.

The issue has been raised again in October 2013 with php-gearman using the PHP license while having different copyright holders (bug #728196). After discussions (ftp masters, release team & Ondřej), it was agreed that the current interpretation is still relevant, and almost all extensions and applications should be either removed or re-licensed by its upstream. This makes the todo list 41 packages long (full list based on Ondřej Surý’s bug reports). Any help with contacting upstream projects, explaining the situation and requesting a license change would be welcomed. We also need to monitor new release based on fulfilling these requests.

Until such a change happen, with automatic removal of packages from testing, we’re going to see packages disappear after mid July. This has a little wider affect due to package dependencies, but for the moment only on testing (Jessie).