The retirement of the PHP license [LWN.net]

The PHP project has long shipped under its own license — except for the parts under the Zend Engine License. The PHP project has now announced that the PHP license has been retired, and the PHP code has been relicensed under the three-clause BSD license. See this blog entry for more details.

Getting here required more than writing an RFC. The PHP License gives the PHP Group the authority to change it, which meant tracking down each of the original PHP Group members and getting their written consent. Each approved the proposal. Perforce Software, the successor to Zend Technologies, needed to sign off on the Zend Engine side, as well. They provided a formal letter confirming their full authority and support for the change. I hired an attorney to review the proposal and provide advice on any legal questions that might surface during the discussion period. Speaking of which, I allowed for a six-month community discussion period preceding the vote, which passed unanimously.

LWN covered the license-change process back in March.

Was the PHP license permissive or copyleft?

Posted May 9, 2026 16:44 UTC (Sat) by swilmet (subscriber, #98424) [Link] (2 responses)

Looking for a TL;DR answer:

Is it a move from a copyleft license to a permissive license (BSD)?

Was the PHP license permissive or copyleft?

Posted May 10, 2026 0:45 UTC (Sun) by edgewood (subscriber, #1123) [Link] (1 responses)

It was permissive, based on Apache 1.0, but GPL-incompatible due to strong restrictions on the use of "PHP" in the name of derived products. The 3BSD license is of course GPL compatible, so I guess overall good for copyleft.

Was the PHP license permissive or copyleft?

Posted May 10, 2026 13:25 UTC (Sun) by swilmet (subscriber, #98424) [Link]

Thanks! It answers well my question.

The retirement of the PHP license

Hooray!

Was the PHP license permissive or copyleft?

Was the PHP license permissive or copyleft?

Was the PHP license permissive or copyleft?