Re: License issues

On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 09:55:05AM -0500, David Dawes wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 02:16:37PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> 
> >And now, you are openly lying to us, trying to say that there is no
> >change, that this licence has always been the XFree86 licence, which is
> >clearly false, and contrary to what everyone has been lead to believe
> 
> I think you need to read what is written, rather than overreacting
> to everything.

Maybe i am overreacting, but i think that the claims that everything is
fine, and has ever been such is still a lie. The licence change is not a
good move, and it will only cause problems in the long run. Still it is
your right to do so, but trying to deny that the practice did actually
change is just cowardly hiding from your responsabilities in this issue.

You well know that i have always been on your side on this and past
issues, so, please let's at least be honest among ourselves.

> The licensing *policy* has not changed.  XFree86 has exercised the
> same freedom of licensing choice that it has been offering its
> contributors for some time.  This is no secret, since there have
> been MIT/X11 and GPL-incompatible licences published in our
> LICENCE/COPYRIGHT docs for many years.  If people don't actually
> go and read those details, then what does that say about the
> importance they give to the licences?

Well, but there is a difference. Those problematic files are rather
minor, and a solution can be found. While no solution can be found to
the clear will of the XFree86 Project to use a non-friendly licence for
what do i know what vengeance and slight reasons.

And again, i have no major problem with the licence change, but at least
stand up to your decision, and accept the consequences of it, and not
trying to hide behind licencing mistakes of the past.

> A positive consequence of this is has been to wake everyone up from
> their misconception that XFree86 was covered as a whole by an
> MIT/X11-compatible licence.  That has not been true in a long time.
> Now that they are undoubtably and publicly aware of this, they need
> to consider how it affects their use and distribution of older
> versions of XFree86.  They can't have it both ways.  If licences
> incompatible with MIT/X11 or GPL or whatever else are a problem
> now, they are problem with previous versions too.

The problematic code will be freed, replaced or riped out, no problem
about this. The only question is if this will happen together with the
XFree86 Project, or separatedly, letting the XFree86 Project as only a
cold corpse on the side of the road.

> Of course if the real problem is something else, then that's another
> matter.

Well, as said, i am not aware of the real reasons for the licence
change, but i do believe that it has something to do with power grabs
and leadership of the code base. It is an error though.

Friendly,

Sven Luther