Re: Question on X and new license...
On Sun, Feb 22, 2004 at 11:43:24PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> * 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.
Yeah, but i believe this is more politicking than anything else.
Branden, do you know the real story behind this whole stuff anyway ?
> * 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.
Mmm, i would like to look into this, and see if i can manage to get
those files changed if needed. Also, you only would need to dual-licence
those drivers under the GPL and the X-Oz licence, which would not be an
all that bad thing politically.
> * 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.)
Your main argument seems to be that this is failing DFSG 9, because it
places restriction on other software on the same media. I believe that
XFree86 interpretation of this, as expressed in their legal FAQ which
should accompany the licence, clearly state that this is not the case,
that it will only apply to derived works, and that providing credit to
XFree86, inside the Release notes document for example, should be
enough.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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