[IMC-Tech] Java, PHP, and Free Software

[kellan]

I just had the interesting experience of registering a project with Gnu's
Savannah service. (a free software, non-commercial version of SourceForge)

Savannah is trying to only support software that the FSF considers to be
free.

Interestingly enough, when I was reading the guidelines for acceptable
projects, and while they state:

"The GNU project fully supports the Java language"

but about PHP they say:

"If you plan using PHP, it would be nice to make sure it works with php3.
The php4 license has restrictions that forbids distribution of modified
source packages. Using PHP3 is the only way to pressure for a license
change."

The dialog last October about the freeness of Java, and some peoples
rejection of Mir as not free, never really went anywhere, which is fine.
A hegemony of belief is boring.  But I do think as a community it might be
good to question our assumptions from time to time.

kellan

ps. I would link to the archived discussions, but the URLs have all
changed :(