On Sun, Feb 29, 2004 at 07:35:23PM -0800, Ken Bloom wrote: > On 2004.02.29 18:32, Mike Simons wrote: > >On Fri, Feb 27, 2004 at 07:18:38PM -0800, Jim Lowman wrote: > >Xfree86 4.4.0 does have support for the Radeon 9800 video card... > >however it seems that XFree86 recently (Jan 29) decided to change the > >license on the X server to be GPL incompatible. Depending on how > >the various distributions deal with with this it may take a while for > >that card to work in most distros. > > > >http://xfree86.org/legal/licenses.html > >=== > >What about GPL-compatibility? > > > >The 1.1 license is not GPL-compatible. To avoid new issues with > >application programs that may be licensed under the GPL, the 1.1 licence > >is not being applied to client side libraries. > >=== > > How exactly does GPL incompatibility cause a problem for the distros?
Well the old license was GPL compatible. If there are any parts of the distribution that the non-GPL X server portions run time link with GPL'd code then distributions would not be able to continue shipping both the new X server and that GPL'd thing. They could chose one other the other but not both. People are upset about this, and a fork of the XFree86 code is possible... which will delay progress. If you search on google for "xfree86 gpl license change" you should get plenty of material to read. http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/gpl-compatible.html === There's also some recent evidence that GPL compatibility is important from one project that's tried to go from GPL-compatible to GPL-incompatible: XFree86. The XFree86 project has historically led development of a popular X server, and traditionally the vast majority of its code used the simple "MIT/X" open source license that is GPL-compatible. The XFree86 president, David Dawes, decided to change the XFree86 license to one that isn't GPL-compatible, primarily to give developers more credit. This proposed license change caused a serious uproar. Jim Gettys, a well-respected developer, strongly opposed this change to the XFree86 license, even though he's not a strong advocate of the GPL. Richard Stallman asked that something be worked out. An article at Linux Today and a discussion at Freedesktop.org show that Red Hat, Debian, SuSE, Gentoo, Mandrake, and OpenBSD plan to drop XFree86 if they switch to this new license. [...] At this point it's not clear what will happen, but I think it's very likely that the license will change (again) or the project will be forked (with most users switching to the fork). === _______________________________________________ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
