Re: License issues

[Ryan Underwood <nemesis-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 07:52:14PM +0100, Nicolas Boulay wrote:
> Le Vendredi 5 Mars 2004 21:43, Ryan Underwood a écrit :
> > > If yes, what will happen now? Many distributors refuse to incorporate
> > > non GPL-compatible code into their releases.
> >
> > This approach is not rational.  I don't know of any distributor that
> > does this either. 
> 
> So OpenBSD, Mandrake, Red Hat, that's not enought ? Where will XFree86 4.4.0 
> be used ?

You misread my statement.  I don't know of any distributor that uses GPL
compatibility as a basis for determining whether a project will be
included in their distribution.  Even GNU acknowledges that the GPL and
licenses compatible with it are a subset of all licenses that qualify as
Free Software licenses.  Excluding free software from a distribution
simply because its license is incompatible with the GPL is ridiculous.

As a matter of practicality, these distributors don't like the fact that
they have another piece of software to add wherever third party credits
are placed in their distribution.  To some extent, I agree with this
grievance, as determining whether you are actually in compliance with
the license or not can be rather nebulous.  This is far more important
compared to the earlier claim that was made, and yet not very important
at all.

XFree86 has a choice; inconvenience distributors somewhat, or either
throw away or request relicensing for all code submitted under the
previous XFree86 licensing policy which took advantage of allowing the
author to demand credit for his work.

What would you have them do?

-- 
Ryan Underwood, <nemesis@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

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