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

[David Dawes]

On Sat, Feb 14, 2004 at 03:22:14PM -0500, Harold L Hunt II wrote:
>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:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>>>>Hash: SHA1
>>>>>
>>>>>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

Thank you for your concern.

Also, thank you for helping to bring the issue of attribution to the
surface of everyone's consciousness.

<http://www.mail-archive.com/devel%40xfree86.org/msg04557.html>

David