Re: License issue, and a possible solution

[Vincent <xfree86@xxxxxxx>]

Greetings.

The comments in this posting are not directed only to Bernhard, who is
making an honest attempt to suggest possible solutions to the XFree86
license controversy, but to all the open software distributors who
have accepted or are considering accepting the new XFree86-1.1
license.

On Sun, Apr 25, 2004 at 03:01:47PM +0200, Bernhard Rosenkraenzer wrote:
> Hi,
> As a Linux distribution that uses XFree86 4.4, we've had to take quite a bit 
> of heat from GPL purists about the license change.

Actually, I do not believe the heat is because of GPL purism.  It is
because combining it with GPL code or creating any kind of combined
work is a violation of the license.  Also, based on the copyright, any
binary written for X that has internal third party credits, such as in
a pop up window, and does not credit the XFree86 project in the same
place, is in violation of the new license.  As a distributer of third
party software, you take on this responsibility and are really leaving
your pants down.  If you think a free software group/company/etc won't
turn on you down the road and use any weapons at their disposal
against you if they decide they do not like you for some reason, just
re-visit the Caldera story.  This is why we have chosen to go with the
X.org branch for our projects.

> While we don't consider the license a problem (especially w/ the widely unkown 
> fact that the client side libraries aren't affected by the change), we think 

See, this is part of the problem.  It would not be widely unknown if
it stated it in the license.  If this is their true intentions, then
why doesn't it?  When you are signing a contract, for example, no
matter what the other party claims their intentions to are, it is what
it says on that piece of paper that counts.  Most of the mainstream
software distributors see this and this is why they immediately
branched.

In reality the client side libraries ARE affected by the change.  That
is why they make the statement in their license FAQ,

    "To avoid issues with application programs such as KDE and GNOME
    and other X-based applications, that are licensed under the GPL,
    the 1.1 license is not being applied to client side libraries."

If the license did not affected them, then they should be able to
apply the license.  Hence, a quote from my earlier posting which was
directed at the XFree86 project:

    "This is essentially saying that all distributions including
    software under the GPL or similar license that is linked to
    XFree86 libraries and includes XFree86 headers will be in
    violation of the copyright, that you realize this, and that you
    are choosing at your own discretion when and where to enforce it."

Even if David Dawes has good intentions, it is just as high of a risk
re-distributing under a copyright that you cannot guarantee compliance
to.

Scenario:

    Let's say the entire free software community accepted the new 1.1
    license and it spread throughout most of the X code over a couple
    of years.  Then a big company such as Microsoft came in and
    offered a few million dollars to buy The XFree86 Project, Inc. and
    they sold out.  Most people do when offered enough to retire on
    the rest of their lives and it would be pocket change for such a
    big company.  Do you think Microsoft would have the best interest
    of the open software community in mind when choosing how to
    exercise the license?  Since X is one of the most integral parts
    of open software and bringing it to the desktop of the average
    user, they would have the entire open source community by the
    balls.

If you don't think this is a stong possibility, just look at the
pattern of big company involvement.  Novel/SUSI, the Caldera/SCO
attacks, etc.  Did you ever dream a few years ago that Caldera, a
mainstream Linux distribution, would join with one of the big open
software enemies and competitors and attack the open software
distributors like they are?

> it would be good to address the problems it causes (people and distributions 
> moving away from the projects, quite a few forks being started [forks can be 
> a good thing -- but the ones about reinventing the wheel would better put 
> their time to doing something new...], FUD being spread, etc.).
> 
> A possible solution:
> Dual-License the affected parts of XFree86 under the XFree86 license 1.1 and 
> the GPL.

That is a nice thought.  It would be better than just the 1.1 license.
However, I do not think it would be enough to cause the commercial
distributors to reverse course.  It wouldn't for us at this point.
The freedom of the original MIT license is the reason for X's success
and dominance across the board on all Unix like platforms.  The
similar freedom of the BSD license also caused many standards across
both commercial and open source software.  Putting it under the GPL
still limits the ability to commercialize on it which limits end users
access to it.  We have seen from David Dawes comments that he thinks
removing commercialism from XFree86 is a good thing.  He wants to
revert back to the old days and thinks end users can just download X
and configure and install it themselves.  I am an avid free software
advocate but I think that is a very "head buried in sand" attitude.
That limits it's usage to only systems administrators and developers.
Even most developers run on a pre-packaged distribution because they
do not have the desire or time to do their own distribution every time
they upgrade or re-install their machine.

I also find it interesting that when David Dawes was directly asked in
one of the earlier postings for examples of where the X licenses has
been abused or where anybody had tried to falsely claim credit for the
code, I never saw any reply.  Please feel free to direct me to it if I
overlooked it.  Since author accreditation was their whole excuse for
the license change, I am in question of their true motives.

Vincent

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