On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 04:27:31PM -0800, Keith Packard wrote: > Please be careful with patches from XFree86 -- these are now often tagged > indicating that the patch is covered by the XFree86 1.1 license even while > the files patched are not. I don't know the legal status of files patched > like this, but it seems best to get fixes from upstream and bypass the > questionable license quagmire entirely. I'm being adequately careful IMO, but I'm a paranoid guy, and it is worth giving this issues some extra attention. No code from XFree86 after the relicensing on 13 February 2004, or bearing an X-Oz Technologies, Inc., copyright notice, should be included in Debian's XFree86 packages (or anywhere in Debian main or contrib, for that matter). As Keith points out, the new XFree86 1.1 license is being applied to many commits to XFree86 CVS nowadays, and sometimes the only notice is the commit message itself. In many cases, this copyright is attached even to changes as simple as the following hypothetical example: Index: programs/Xserver/GL/SNP/Imakefile =================================================================== RCS file: /cvs/xc/programs/Xserver/GL/SNP/Imakefile,v retrieving revision 1.7 retrieving revision 1.8 diff -u -r1.7 -r1.8 --- programs/Xserver/GL/SNP/Imakefile 11 Feb 2003 21:34:04 -0000 1.7 +++ programs/Xserver/GL/SNP/Imakefile 18 Mar 2004 07:06:33 -0000 1.8 @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -XCOMM $XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/GL/SNP/Imakefile,v 1.7 2003/02/11 21:34:04 smithers Exp $ +XCOMM $XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/GL/SNP/Imakefile,v 1.8 2004/03/18 07:06:33 burns Exp $ #define IHaveModules #include <Server.tmpl> @@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ LinkSourceFile(xf86SNPstr.h,$(LIBSRC)/GL/SNP) ModuleObjectRule() -LibraryModuleTarget(SNP,$(OBJS)) +LibraryModuleTarget(SNP,$(OBJS),excellent) InstallLibraryModule(SNP,$(MODULEDIR),excellent) DependTarget() Whether copyright can credibly be said to attach to changes such as the above is left as an exercise for the reader. -- G. Branden Robinson | I've made up my mind. Don't try to Debian GNU/Linux | confuse me with the facts. branden@debian.org | -- Indiana Senator Earl Landgrebe http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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