On Sun, Feb 22, 2004 at 09:40:07PM -0500, Steven J. Hill wrote: > Greetings. > > I really really apologize in advance for the question. Please flame me > if I should be on a different list. I have attempted to read some > archives on 'freedesktop.org' as well as the Debian X archives. With > the new license, how is the Debian project going to proceed with X? I > am interested if there is going to be a new tree and what the last > development snapshot is that does not contain the 1.1 license? Thanks. No problem, right list. * No member of the Debian X Strike Force, the team that now maintains Debian's packages of the X Window System, has declared any intention to package any work under the XFree86 1.1 license, also known as the X-Oz license (whose terms are identical, and which predates the new XFree86 license by a few months). * The X-Oz license is not GPL-compatible according to most parties who have expressed an opinion, including the Debian Project and the Free Software Foundation. * The infrastructural nature of the X Window System sample implementation, which XFree86 includes, and the large base of GPL-licensed software built on that sample implementation, renders a GPL-incompatible change to that base deeply problematic from a practical standpoint. * David Dawes, President of The XFree86 Project, Inc., claims that a a decision to apply the X-Oz license to any "client side library" code shipped by that organization has been "deferred".[1] This statement is a lot weaker than a guarantee that it never will happen. * Code that forms part of the XFree86 SDK, a driver development kit (which there has been some work to package for Debian) *is* under the X-Oz license, and would prohibit the development of GPL-licensed drivers for the XFree86 X server. * I have argued to the debian-x mailing list that the X-Oz license is actually not even a Free Software license, because, at the least, it fails clause 9 of the Debian Free Software Guidelines in two distinct ways. If you're interested, you may wish to read my message[2] to that list. (It is worth noting that the debian-legal subscribers have not formed a strong consensus one way or the other regarding the DFSG-freeness of the X-Oz license; the matter is still pending.) Given all of the above, it is my recommendation to the Debian X Strike Force, the Debian Project in general, and to the Open Source and Free Software communities to avoid all code under the X-Oz license (a.k.a. XFree86 1.1 license). I expect a consortium of GNU/Linux and *BSD vendors to coalsece around the efforts of the Free Desktop organization[3], one of which is likely to be a fork of the XFree86 code from CVS HEAD, probably as of 12 Feburary 2004 (immediately prior to the application of the new license). Furthermore, code to which the X-Oz license applies will have to removed as well. Specifically, this comprises two commits made to XFree86 CVS on 8 October 2003[4][5], which implement automatic configuration of the XFree86 X server, obviating the need for an XF86Config file in some cases. I hope this information is helpful. (Fellow debian-x subscribers: I'd like your feedback on this message, as once debian-legal has made its decision regarding the DFSG-freeness of the X-Oz license, I'd like to re-purpose it, perhaps as a mail to debian-devel-announce and/or as a position statement to placed on the X Strike Force news page. If any contributor to Debian's X packaging has any objection to the above statements, please speak up.) [1] http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/forum/2004-February/003998.html [2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/debian-legal-200402/msg00162.html [3] http://www.freedesktop.org/ [4] Message-Id: <200310081458.h98EwV4O058646@public.xfree86.org> [5] Message-Id: <200310081501.h98F1orA003387@public.xfree86.org> -- G. Branden Robinson | Debian GNU/Linux | If ignorance is bliss, branden@debian.org | is omniscience hell? http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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