On Sun, Jul 11, 2004 at 08:54:40AM +0800, Andy Sy wrote: > I fail to see, though, what it is in those new terms that sound so > unreasonable. After all it is still an open source license, and > aren't those terms comparable to the BSD license anyway?
That depends on which version of the BSD license you're talking about. It appears that XFree86 decided to add an obnoxious advertising clause that rendered it GPL-incompatible. Yes, it's still a Free Software license--even the FSF acknowledges that--but the fact that it changed to being GPL-incompatible when so much GPL software depends on it is what causes the problem. > For almost all other Linux distros besides Debian (one of whose aims > is to remain 'ideologically pure'), the terms don't really amount to > anything more than a requirement to copy-and-paste a notice right? > True, but that in itself makes you GPL-incompatible. Think of what that means. How many millions of lines of code in Gnome and KDE are there that link to the XFree86 libraries, that would all be in violation of either the XFree86 license or the GPL unless they included a special exception, the way all GPLed programs that link to OpenSSL must in order to stay within bounds of both licenses. The difference is, OpenSSL's license had always been GPL incompatible, whereas XFree86's had been GPL compatible up until now, it seems. It's never wise to open yourself to the possibility of a lawsuit, you know, and changing licenses to include the special exception is very difficult, especially since we're talking about millions of lines of code contributed by thousands of people all over the world. Getting permission from all of them could be quite a chore, as you might imagine. This issue, however, mainly affects distro vendors / communities, and ever since SCO they've learned to take these licensing issues much more seriously. > I believe the real reason that Linux distros (including pragmatic > ones like Slackware in which you can find Sun's Java SDK and Netscape > 7 included) are moving to the X org distribution (historically speaking, > X org has not really contributed as much to X's public availability as > XFree has) distribution is because they perceive that there are very few, > if any, real hackers left in XFree right now and that anyone who's anyone > has joined the efforts of Keith Packard et al. under the freedesktop.org > banner. Well, this is also true. David Dawes managed to alienate a lot of developer mindshare with some heavy handed mismanagement, so I guess combined with the licensing issues this serves as the last nail in XFree86's coffin. Rest in Peace XFree86... -- dido "When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint; but when I asked why people are poor, they called me a communist." -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
