Re: License furor

On Mon, May 24, 2004 at 08:25:09PM -0400, mark kandianis wrote:
> At 06:02 PM 5/24/2004 -0500, you wrote:
> >On Fri, May 21, 2004 at 03:48:13PM -0400, William M. Quarles wrote:
> >> Someone respond to this man!  He's making some good discussion here.
> >>
> >> I don't understand what the problem is with the new license either.  In
> >> comparing it to the modified BSD license, which supposedly is GPL
> >> compatible, the XFree86 1.1 License looks almost exactly the same.  Why
> >> is it specifically that the XFree86 1.1 License is GPL incompatible,
> >> whereas the BSD license is not?
> >
> >Read the thread where we discussed this about a month ago near the end
> >of April.  The exact problem was discussed in detail.  It looks very
> >similar at first glance, but the following statement in the new
> >XFree86 license makes it very different.
> >
> >"in the same form and location as other such third-party
> >acknowledgments"
> >
> >I know of no other open source license that contains this condition.
> >As I said before, that is a legal booby trap where no distributor of
> >open source software can guarantee they are not violating the license.
> 
> 
> i could not find one either and i have no inside track to why it was added.
> maybe to be distinct ;-)  but the rest of it is pretty close to
> 
> http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE
> 
> peace and brotherhood,
> 
> mark.

Yes, I seem to remember seeing other comments comparing it to the
Apache license but, it is definitely not the same.  The Apache license
says,

    3. The end-user documentation included with the redistribution,
       if any, must include the following acknowledgment:
          "This product includes software developed by the
           Apache Software Foundation (http://www.apache.org/)."
       Alternately, this acknowledgment may appear in the software itself,
       if and wherever such third-party acknowledgments normally appear.

This is basically the same as the BSD license.  The statement, "if and
wherever such third-party acknowledgments normally appear" option is
very similar sounding as the new XFree86 license, except, in the
Apache license, you have the alternative option of including it in the
end-user documentation without conditions of where and in what form it
is in.

That "same place and form" statement in the XFree86-1.1 license is
what concerns us.  If you are re-distributing free software and any of
the thousands of X applications that contains any code from the
XFree86 project has a pop up attributing third party software and not
the XFree86 project, then no matter what acknowledgments you include
in the documentation with your distribution, you are violating the
copyright because it is not in the same form (not in the pop up
window).


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