Adam Trachtenberg looks today at an aspect of the Zend Framework that is only now being mentioned - dealing with the intellectual property (IP) of it all and what licenses they might use.

This is the second time I’ve heard IP as one of the motivations behind the Zend Framework. The first time was from David, and now there’s this line from Wez.

It just goes to show how licenses and IP really do matter, and big companies really do take this seriously. This is a good thing, and only goes to strengthen open source licenses. However, I think it’s come as a surprise to some open source developers.

Again, I think this is another big step in the right direction for open source. We all know free refers to more than just cost. It’s also the freedom to modify and redistribute code. At the same time, the cost of something is more than the purchase price. It’s also the risk associated with it. By reducing risk in all forms, we make the code even more free.

It'll be interesting to see what kind of licensing all of this will end up under. How will they handle patches from outside developers down the road to fix bugs? Will only a core group of developers decide what changes should go into future versions of the framework?