On Sat, Aug 15, 1998 at 07:54:56PM -0600, Marcelo E. Magallon wrote: > Hi, > > recently someone announced a new xdm-alike application: wdm (WINGs > Display Manager). It's GPLed. But it's based on XDM (based = most of > the code is xdm actually and you need xdm's source to build > this). The X Consortium copyright appears on xdm's source, so I > presume this license applies to it: [...] > Now my question is: is it ok to release this thing under the GPL? > Moving from the X Consortium's license to GPL is a rather drastic > license change. Should the copyright read something more like xbase's > copyright, i.e., the part the wdm author wrote is GPLed, and the xdm > stuff is still under X Consortium's license or XFree86's? The X Consortium and XFree86 licenses are permissive enough that it is indeed possible and perfectly legal to co-opt the source into a more restrictive license, since all those licenses demand is preservation of notices, not preservation of the license itself. The Open Group just did this with X itself (the closed up the X source starting with X11R6.4 except to paying customers), and people were mighty pissed at them, but no one disputes that the Open Group had the legal right to do this. So yes, it is acceptable to suck X Consortium or XFree86 code into a GPL'ed application. I think it's pretty bad manners, though. -- G. Branden Robinson | America is at that awkward stage. It's Purdue University | too late to work within the system, but branden@purdue.edu | too early to shoot the bastards. http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/~branden/ | --Claire Wolfe
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