Re: New licence and driver SDK ?

On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 11:40:15AM -0500, David Dawes wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 01:14:22PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> >Hello,
> >
> >A new problem with the new licence was taken to my attention, concerning
> >the SDK. It seems some files of the SDK, which are linked with the
> >hardware drivers may be affected by the licence change, which would
> >preclude pure GPLed third party drivers.
> >
> >I have not checked actual files that may be concerned yet, but do the
> >XFree86 Project have an opinion already on this point ? 
> 
> Why are you asking us?  The XFree86 licence does not place any
> specific requirements on what licences may be used by drivers or
> other code.  This is a question that only the driver author can
> answer.

Well, i was hoping you will extend the same courtesy you gave the client
side library to the pieces of software that gets actually linked with
the driver, or just asking for your position on this. I had plans to
soon rework on the SDK issue, now that 4.3.0 did enter debian unstable.

> If the driver author takes a strict view of the interpretation of
> the GPL, then they have a problem.  But they had a problem before
> if their driver was ever loaded into the XFree86 server executable
> at the same time as the GLX module, which has always been
> GPL-incompatible.  The GPL FAQ gives an example of how such problems,
> if the author considers them so, can be resolved with an exception
> clause.

Yeah, that would maybe be the best solution.

> But like I said, this is something that only the driver author can
> answer.

I still this whole issue is a mess, and would be happier if the change
did not actually happen, but then, its your piece of code.

Friendly,

Sven Luther