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

[Harold L Hunt II]

David Dawes wrote:
> 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.

Your Red Herring defenses are getting old David.

You never presented this is a discovery of some questionable licenses in 
the source tree.  I assert that the licensing change has, from the 
start, been an action initiated by you due to your being pissed off that 
your lack of leadership and communication skills have lead others to 
conclude that the XFree86 project is unlikely to continue being relevant 
in the future.  In other words, you kicked everyone out of your sandbox 
and now you are crying because they have created their own sandbox to 
play in and they are having a lot more fun than your bitter self.  Your 
response to this was to try to force these others to call their sandbox 
"The Sandbox Project, based in part off of work from the XFree86 
Project".  On the other hand, you seem to be pushing harder to get 
XFree86 approved as a trademark; your intentions here can only be 
assumed to be dubious given your past behavior.

The truth is David, I don't care about XFree86 nor about the license 
change.  I care more about the fact that your behavior over the past two 
years indicates to me that you are likely to be depressed and in need of 
professional help.  It is sad that you cannot ask for help in order to 
benefit yourself and a project that you have dedicated a lot of time to.

Until you get better,

Harold