[forum] Re: Announcement: Modification to the base XFree86(TM) license.

[Nicolas Boulay]

Le Dimanche 1 Février 2004 00:59, David Dawes a écrit :
> On Sat, Jan 31, 2004 at 11:25:13PM +0100, Nicolas Boulay wrote:
> >Le Samedi 31 Janvier 2004 21:59, David Dawes a écrit :
> >> Perhaps a more serious part of the "one way" problem is this very
> >> discussion.  Has anyone considered modifying the GPL to be more
> >> compatible with other Open Source licences rather than trying to force
> >> all Open Source licences to be a subset of the GPL?  To me it seems a
> >> signficant flaw to the GPL if it is incompatible with Open Source
> >> developers' desire to receive due credit for their work from those who
> >> redistribute it. If GPL compatibility is such a big issue to GPL
> >> advocates, then perhaps, for their own benefit, it needs to be more
> >> accomodating than it currently is.
> >
> >FSF considers that copyright apply on code greater than 10 lines of code.
> > So, with licence BSD (first version) like, you should write the name of
> > all the autors. From the pratical point of view, it's impossible to do it
> > right.
>
> The modified BSD licence, which the FSF says is GPL-compatible, still
> requires that the copyright notice, list of conditions, and disclaimer
> be reproduced in the documentation and/or other material accompanying
> the distribution.  That means that potentially a page or more of text
> is required for each author's copyright notice.  The FSF doesn't appear
> to feel that this is unreasonable, probably because the GPL also requires
> it.  So the argument is that while including *pages* of copyright notices
> in documentation is no burden, including *lines* of credit notices is?
>

The point is not the size of the texte. The point is that it is impossible to 
do it right.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html

> >I'm not a laywer but if this requirement is badly fullfill (only
> > maintainer and main coder name are in the files), the licence could
> > became void. It's look like main mainteners owned all the code. So it
> > could became a "weak" point from the legal point of view. The zealot
> > could also came from SCO like compagnies.
>
> The same argument applies to the requirement that the copyright notices
> be reproduced verbatim in the material accompanying distributions of
> binaries, a requirement that is part of the GPL.
>

For a GPL binaries, it will always be the same texte. If you must add a name 
for each contributors, the list will be ever growing (and never up to date).

Nicolas

> David