(no subject)
"umberto" <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.xfree86.forum |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
------- Forwarded message -------From: Sven Luther <[email protected]>To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]: Re: FWD from XFree86 forum: GPL-incompatible licenseDate: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 14:42:57 +0100 On Tue, Feb 10, 2004 at 05:00:25PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:On Tue, Feb 10, 2004 at 01:10:04PM -0500, Leon Shiman wrote:> ------------- Begin Forwarded Message -------------> From: David Dawes <[email protected]>> To: Richard Stallman <[email protected]>> Cc: [email protected]> Subject: Re: [forum] GPL-incompatible license[...]> Basically, XFree86 licensing policy has always been to allow licences> that satisfy both of these extremely important requirements:>> 1. Be an Open Source licence.> 2. Not require that source code be made available for binary-only> distributions of derivative works.>> The general preference has been for licences like the BSD and MIT> licences. By BSD, I mean the original BSD licence in common use when> XFree86 began. Historically, GPL compatibility has not been an issue> one way or the other regarding XFree86's licensing policy and so to make> it an issue now would represent a very real change in our licensing> policy. For the Debian Project, I recently did some investigation of the claimthat the 4-clause BSD license, which I think is what David is referringto (since the Regents dropped the advertising clause in 1998, and IXFree86 was founded years prior), is preferentially used in the XFree86code base. That license is indeed used, but an MIT-style copyright is used on morecode in XFree86 copyrighted by the Regents than the 4-clause BSD licenseis, despite the latter being the representation of the Regents'c opyright license in XFree86's LICENSE file. The messy truth is that there is code copyrighted by the Regents inXFree86 under *several* similar but distinct licenses. Some with anadvertising clause, some without. Some GPL-compatible, some not. My f indings follow. Please feel free to ignore the references toDFSG-freeness, which is a concern primarily for the Debian project, andmy footnote discussion of unpacking a Debian source package. If this next part bores you, skip to the end for my conclusions. Branden, Again, you do great job in following the licence stuff, andfelicitations to you and to the rest of the X strike force for the soonto be upcoming 4.3.0-1 package. I have an interogation about the aim of this mail though. You areclearly following up on a mail from [email protected], but in thisresponse you don't CC them. Is this willed from your part, as a way todiscuss this issue without XFree86 and then inform them about this ? Ormaybe it was only a mistake from your part and you forgot them in yourCC list ? Or maybe some other reason ? Could you please clarify yourposition on this point, and eventually forward this list to t [email protected] mailing list too ? Friendly, Sven Luther _______________________________________________ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web!