What are the actual reasons behind the licence change ?

Hi,

I'm not a usual writer to this forum, nor a frequent contributor to
XFree86, though I'm writing a lot of free software code, mostly in
OpenBSD (well, I've fixed a few bugs in lots of places, including in
XFree86, as Matthieu Herb can vouch for).

I really don't understand the current change of the XFree86 licence.

At a time where people are either moving to GPL (thankfully, not an
option for XFree86) OR moving to a simpler-style BSD licence (starting,
more or less when the Regents rescinded the advertizement clause), XFree
is moving into the other direction ???

Moreover, it's changing its licence to yet another new licence. Who drafted
the new words ? what do they actually mean ?  I'm not wanting to imply
malice, but we had some previous bad experience with some tweaked BSD
licence (e.g., Darren's Reed infamous IPF licence, with the missing
*with or without modification*).

Is this really necessary ? who decides this kind of thing ? It doesn't
even look consensual to me.  Heck, the two XFree contributors I happen to
have met in person (hi, Matthieu, hi Juliusz)  are opposing the new licence.

It seems to me like David Dawes just changed the licence on a whim, and
there are a few people who support it (I've seen absolutely no real
argument as to why), and quite a few more relevant people who oppose him
(sorry, my point of view. People I actually know personally are more
relevant to me anyways).



I won't respectfully ask that the licence be changed back.

Nope, I just think it should be changed back, and I don't intend to beg for
it.

If it isn't, it is going to splinter the community.  We already know 
that Keith Packard has gone elsewhere, there is competition to XFree like 
freedesktop, and various vendors have already stated they are NOT going
to ship XFree 4.4 with the new licence. To wit, OpenBSD has stopped right
before the licence change, mandrake said they won't do it, Debian is
planning to stay with 4.3. (uh, oh, how does that smell to you ?)

I'm a bit surprised FreeBSD and NetBSD haven't issued statements yet,
though knowing them, they might decide to endorse the new licence just
to try to piss OpenBSD off (nah, just joking).

So, what are we going to end up with ? probably a not relevant XFree86
project, with a split under a better licence. Worst case,  linux people
are going to run with it and put more and more of X11 under the GPL
(hey, it's already happening in freedesktop... guess how the BSD people
like that. Not a lot. guess how the XFree86 people would love that. Not
that much. Otherwise, you would have envisioned a switch to GPL already,
wouldn't you ?). Better case, a project equivalent to XFree, manned by
people who like the XFree86 1.0 licence, or even (horror) that might be
proactive enough to try to hunt authors and rescind all advertisement
clauses, or rewrite the other parts so that it looks like a modern BSD
licence.

Best and simplest case, no split. Revert to the old, normal licence.
And stop caring about pissing contests. Any decent vendor is going to
acknowledge XFree86 anyways.  And any decent user is going to recognize
the XFree86 project's contribution to mankind's happiness and kow-tow to
its fearless leader, David Dawes.

Simply put, you have an opportunity to generate a lot of grief and a lot
of duplicated efforts upon wasted politics. Show the world you're bigger
than that, and come back to your senses.