On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 12:59:19PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote: > 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 ? No. I suspect there's only one person who does, and he appears to be adamant that there's nothing more to know. > > * 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. If you could: 1) identify all files shipped by the SDK affected by the relicensing; and 2) a) get them relicensed under the previous license; or b) get them dual-licensed under the GNU GPL; and 3) get a statement from the XFree86 Project, Inc., that any file shipped as part of the SDK in the future will be handled the same as the ones that are part of it today ...then I'd be very appreciative! I think many people in the community would be as well. > > * 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. I tried to follow a link to the FAQ from here: http://www.xfree86.org/xnews/#license But it didn't work. Not Found The requested URL /xnews/legal/licenses.html was not found on this server. -- G. Branden Robinson | Suffer before God and ye shall be Debian GNU/Linux | redeemed. God loves us, so He branden@debian.org | makes us suffer Christianity. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Aaron Dunsmore
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