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

[David Dawes]

On Sat, Feb 14, 2004 at 02:08:24PM -0500, Harold L Hunt II wrote:
>mark kandianis wrote:
>> At 03:36 PM 2/14/2004 +0000, Chris Howells wrote:
>> 
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>>> On Friday 13 February 2004 20:50, David Dawes wrote:
>>> > This begs a couple of questions that I have yet to see answered:
>>>
>>> OK... so if you don't fully understand the consequences of changing the
>>> license, I'm somewhat fascinated and intrigued as to why it has _already_
>>> been changed, rather than, say, making a proposal and letting people 
>>> comment
>>> on it.
>>>
>>> - --
>>> Cheers, Chris Howells -- chris@chrishowells.co.uk, howells@kde.org
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> it wasn't changed until last night after a two-week notice.
>> i think you are a little late to the discussion, but it's good
>> to clear these things up anyhow.
>
>Actually, you are late to the discussion.  In fact, why don't you just 
>not participate in this discussion since you have clearly not been 
>following the events as they have unfolded.  The license change was 
>first checked into CVS on 2003/12/12, not last night:

Try 1998/09/06, or earlier...

Licences of this type were in the repository years ago.  The easiest
example to quote is FreeType 1.x, which dates from before the
FreeType project dual-licensed their work.  Even after the
dual-licensing of FreeType, XFree86 distributes it under the FTL,
advertising clause and all.  The alternative would be for us to
distribute it under the GPL, and as everyone knows, that is undeniably
contrary to XFree86 licensing policy.

Therefore if XFree86 licensing policy disallowed licences with an
advertising clause and disallowed GPL'd code, we could never have
distributed FreeType, or distributed code that relied on FreeType.

There is other stuff too.  The fact that you appear to have been
unaware until recently of the types of licences considered acceptable
for code included in XFree86 is not evidence of a recent change.
It is only evidence of your ignorance in this matter.

David