The XFree86 Project is committed to providing freely redistributable binary and source releases. The main licence we use is derived from the traditional Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) X11/X Consortium licence, the Berkley Standard Distribution (BSD) license, and the Apache 1.1 licence. The XFree86 Project's licence does not impose any conditions on the modification or redistribution of the source code or binaries other than requiring that copyright and/or licenses notices are left intact, and that due credit is given. This is consistent with the Open Source definition.
There are also portions of the XFree86 product that are based on similar open-source licenses. The essential part of licences used for components of XFree86 is that source code and binaries can be modified and redistributed with a minimum of conditions. This licensing philosophy can be summarised as "You can do what you like with the code except claim you wrote it."
The decision to use this form of licence was made to continue the long tradition of allowing X and XFree86 code to be used as widely as possible and with no discrimination between free or commercial products.
Copyright/licensing notices for our current 4.x release can be found in our online documentation.
The current revision as well as previous revisions of the XFree86 Project's license can be found here.
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XFree86® is a registered trademark of The XFree86 Project, Inc.
Last Updated: 9 February 2005