Mission statement and 1.1 license issues

[John Bradford <john@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My opinion of the whole situation is that the XFree86 licensing
situation was a complete mess _before_ the 1.1 license, but it was
just about managable in practice.  The introduction of the 1.1 license
was one tiny step further away from that, but one which has been very
visible, and as a result of this, many users are acknowledging the
problems that existed before for the first time.

I don't believe that the license change in itself is a serious
practical problem.  The new license is not really any more restrictive
than many of the other licenses that were used in various places of
the source tree.

This fact makes it easy for anybody who is so inclined to say that
very little has changed, and claim that anybody who is complaining is
making a lot of noise over nothing.

Maybe the real issue is infact with the mission statement of the
XFree86 project, rather than it's license.

The mission statement of the XFree86 project says nothing directly
about serving the existing userbase of the XFree86 project.

In practice, I think that this is an unwritten goal of many, if not
most, free, open source projects.  For example, note the generally
strong reluctance to break anything that is actively used by even a
small percentage of the userbase, in Linux kernel development.

I have always assumed that the XFree86 project would adopt a similar
'unwritten rule'.  Note that the mission statement does specify some
non-goals, and providing continuity for the existing userbase is not
one of those non-goals.  Should I instead have assumed that anything
which is not a stated goal is a non-goal by implication?  Should I
have assumed that the reference to influences from political interests
is so wide in it's use of the word 'political' as to include the views
of the current userbase as a political interest?

After the recent license change, my interpretation of the mission
statement is now that if something can be achieved which helps the
project progress towards the stated goals of the mission statement,
there is no need for any consideration of the needs of the existing
userbase, and that no attempt needs to be made to ensure that existing
users continue to be able to use the latest version of the codebase
for the same purposes as earlier versions, _or_ at least have a
reasonable alternative other than forking the codebase, such as active
maintainence of old branches, or separated out security patches.

Are YOU happy to use, and in many cases rely, on a codebase which is
managed with the goals as stated in the mission statement?

For example, in my opinion, it would be a good service to the existing
userbase to go through and audit all the code, and either remove and
replace code which is under very restrictive licenses, or ask the
copyright holders to re-license it.

Of course, this doesn't fit in with the stated goals in the mission
statement.

I urge users of XFree86 to read the mission statement, and decide
whether you want to rely on this project or not.

If the mission statement was not followed so agressively, what it says
might not be as important, but - in my opinion unlike many, or even most
other free, open source projects - the XFree86 project seem to stick
VERY closely to their mission statement, even when it appears to be
detrimental to many of the existing userbase.

John.
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