Re: License issue, and a possible solution

At 03:01 PM 4/25/2004 +0200, you wrote:
>Hi,
>As a Linux distribution that uses XFree86 4.4, we've had to take quite a bit
>of heat from GPL purists about the license change.
>
>While we don't consider the license a problem (especially w/ the widely 
>unkown
>fact that the client side libraries aren't affected by the change), we think
>it would be good to address the problems it causes (people and distributions
>moving away from the projects, quite a few forks being started [forks can be
>a good thing -- but the ones about reinventing the wheel would better put
>their time to doing something new...], FUD being spread, etc.).
>
>A possible solution:
>Dual-License the affected parts of XFree86 under the XFree86 license 1.1 and
>the GPL.
>
>Rationale:
>1) The needs of XFree86 are still fulfilled -- if someone doesn't want to
>comply with the credit clause, they have to provide the source, which in turn
>gives credit to the project (after all, the copyright notices are all over
>it, and the tarball/zipfile/whatever will be called XFree86 so people can see
>what it is without looking at the code)
>2) The needs of GPL purists are fulfilled -- they can link GPL software with
>all parts of XFree86, they can't claim anymore it's non-free, they don't need
>to start forks, ...
>3) Because of 2), distributions that have switched to something else can
>return to XFree86
>4) Because of 3), maybe some of the duplicated work going into XFree86, 
>X.Org,
>XOuvert, ... can be merged back into one tree, avoiding the unneeded
>duplication.


bero,

i think despite your best intentions it would not work.  my reason is i 
originally
thought the same and suggested as much early on.

x.org and their man alan  said that gpl was totally unacceptable to them 
and i paraphrase,
that as bad as this was, that would be worse mainly because of 'binary 
drivers' etc. and so on.
while the kernel has a user space,   xfree doesn't have that concept so i 
think that would
force the vendors to make gpl drivers, and wow,  not even linus does 
that.  so i reluctantly
have to agree with alan and juliusz, it would be a dud and a short-circuit 
to hell.

the only thing  with your outline that i do disagree with is that dual 
licensing would stop forks.
they existed before the license and will probably exist no matter what 
xfree86 does.
i don't do irc like i used, but i would imagine, purely from lack of 
anything else,
that mr mister would not be effected one way or the other.  freedesktop got 
xissle
problems so i don't know about them either but i don't think they are 
forking because
of the license.   their reasons go deeper than that.

in the end  have to agree with kurt and david that the license issue is and 
remains bogus...
unfortunately.

as for vincent, what distro is this?  i found no crel linux.

mark.