Re: more licence red-herrings

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On Wed, Apr 28, 2004 at 02:21:48PM -0400, David Dawes wrote:
> The notion that some are pushing that the licensing of the headers and
> libraries that make up a public API somehow affects applications that
> use the API is yet another licensing red herring.  I have stated publicly
> that I do not subscribe to this novel little FSF-promoted view of derived
> works.  Anyone who wishes to interpret licensing, and XFree86 licensing
> in particular, in that way is creating phantom problems of their own
> making.  So, even if the XFree86 public libraries and headers were under
> the 1.1 licence (which they are not), it would in no way impose any new
> requirements on applications that simply use those public interfaces.

If what you are saying is true, and it does not affect the
applications, then that leaves just the server as has been suggested
many times in these discussions.  Since, as I said before, I know of
no X servers derived from XFree86 that pop up their own splash
screens, credit windows, etc, then I have to assume it would not
change the distributors requirements of license credits there either.

So sir, could you provide us an example of where an existing
distribution would have to do anything different with this new
license?

If not, then please explain what you have accomplished, aside from the
X.org split, and all the lost development time from dealing with all
the opposition, legal fears, and discussion.


> The public libraries in XFree86 remain under a license considered
> acceptable by most authors who apply the GPL to their work.  This is a
> concession that was made to neutralise what was the most reasonable of
> the objections to the XFree86 1.1 licence.  The way that this has been
> received (ignored, misrepresented, etc) speaks volumes.
> 
> A little consistency would be nice too.  How many distros still ship
> the GPL-incompatible GL libraries?  They were still in the x.org tree
> and release last I checked.  Nobody seems to be concerned about this.
> Why?
> 
> The discriminatory manner in which the XFree86 1.1 licence is being
> treated is disturbing.  I have yet to see self-consistent licensing
> policies, applied without exception, published by the distros, vendors,
> the likes of the new x.org foundation, and others that would justify
> this.  That also speaks volumes.
> 
> No, this is discrimination, plain and simple, and XFree86 will not pander
> to discriminatory treatment.
> 
> David

I disagree.  First of all, at least speaking for myself and our
projects, this has nothing to do with discrimination.  We have always
been very fond and appreciative of the XFree86 project.  In fact,
legal issues aside, we were originally actually more inclined to
discriminate against the X.org because of concerns about the past
history of some of the big names involved.

So far as your comment about th GL libraries, I will fully agree if
you turn out to be right.  In that case, I would want to push for
getting those licenses changed or to replace that code to prevent
another split and/or legal battle down the road.  But adding
additional licenses that are incompatible with GPL and other open
source projects because there are already some licenses in this
category slipping through is not a solution to the problem.  It can
only make things worse.

However, I just scanned the entire GL trees under .../Xserver/GL and
.../lib/GL for XFree86-4.3.0 (I happened to already have it unpacked).
Under the lib tree, every file I saw was under what appeared to be the
original MIT license.  Under the Xserver tree, some of it was under
the MIT license and some of it was under two different licenses from
Silicon Graphics, both of which were basically the same so far as I
could tell.  They are

SGI Free Software License B Version 1.1 (GLX)
http://xfree86.mirror.or.kr/current/LICENSE9.html

GLX Public License Version 1.0
http://www.sgi.com/software/opensource/glx/license.html

Both of these licenses, so far as I can tell are very similar to the
FreeBSD license, although a lot more wordy.  I saw no restrictions
about the form of the credits or any other restriction that should
conflict with other open source projects.

If I am wrong, could you please point us to specific files and/or
licenses either in the GL tree or elsewhere in the X tree and explain
how they are legally incompatible?  If you are correct, then you would
be doing the open source community a positive service by bringing it
to light.

Vincent
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