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

[Egbert Eich]

Jim Gettys writes:
 > There are two issues with this change:
 > 	1) the decision making process.
 > 	2) the consequences of the change.
 > 
 > On both grounds, I must oppose.
 > 
 > Any license change that has affects on *other* people's code,
 > as this one potentially does since it is being applied
 > to parts of a much larger aggregate, should be discussed in advance.
 > What someone/an organization does that does not affect others
 > copyrights ultimately is their decision.  However, in this case,
 > there may be consequences to this action that affect other
 > people's contributions to code distributed by XFree86. Therefore this
 > should have been discussed *in advance* with the community.
 > It is unacceptable that such changes be presented ex post
 > facto.
 > 
 > Secondly, XFree86 has recently been a steward 
 > of a technology that has seen major contributions by many, many 
 > people and organizations, over 20 years. As Stallman notes in
 > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html, the consequences of
 > everyone demanding acknowledgment can rapidly become untenable.
 > What if all contributors demand such acknowledgment?

This can happen and may in fact create the same problems as the old BSD
license did.
Placing a huge list of contributors into an about window seems to
be just as awkward as putting this into an add.
However with a small difference:
The old BSD license requires the inclusion of the copyright notice
in advertising material *unconditionally* whereas the new XF86 license
requires the inclusion of this  statement in documentation or the binary
in the same form as other third party acknowledgements - which also 
means you *only* have to do it *if* you also acknowledge other third 
parties. 
I consider it problematic to make a judgement which third party 
contributions are worthwhile mentioning and which are not.


 > 
 > Similarly, I must oppose this change for the same reasons I
 > have opposed Stallman's "GNU/Linux" campaign in public:
 > the contributors to the X Window System technology are
 > amazingly wide ranging, from people and organizations
 > including the DRI project, MIT, Digital, Sun, SGI,
 > the X Consortium, SuSE, HP, Metrolink and so on: many, many more 
 > than can possibly ever be properly acknowledged.  
 > 
 > XFree86's contributions will not be forgotten, but they are in 
 > fact no more key or central than many others represented in the
 > technology and code distributed by XFree86, and arrogating
 > that XFree86 must be acknowledged when most others with similar major
 > contributions are not, is not in the proper spirit of community
 > and sharing, so I must similarly oppose this change, as I do
 > with calling Linux GNU/Linux.
 > 

Yes, that's essentailly the same issue as stated above.

In this discussion nobody seems to be able to seriously debate 
the request for proper acknowledgement - especially if other
third parties are acknowldeged.
So far only practicability issues and issues of conflict with
other licenses have been raised - which however don't seem to
invalidate the request for acknowledgement itself. The license 
conflict issues arise since the other license involved imposes 
very strong restrictions and it is expected for other licenses 
to adjust accordingly. Furthermore the GPL doesn't seem to address 
the issue of acknowledgement at all. 
Instead of declaring this to be a no issue and arguing against it 
with practicability reasons it would be more fruitful to discuss
how a valid request for acknowledgement can be handled in an open 
source environment in the future.

Egbert.