XFree86 gone from Fedora Core? WHY!?
William M. Quarles
walrus at bellsouth.net
Mon May 24 23:39:55 UTC 2004
Cesar Cardoso wrote:
> On Sat, 22 May 2004 19:22:51 -0400, William M. Quarles
> <walrus at bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>>I don't want an endless discussion, far from it. People have put forth
>>that the central issue here for why XFree86 is no longer part of Fedora
>>Core is the license change and some conduct of the now-disbanded core
>>team. If someone could just answer why the license is GPL incompatible
>>while the modified BSD license is not, that would be enough for me.
>>
>
> The difference between the original BSD license and the modified BSD
> license is that the modified BSD license doesn't have the advertising
> clause that made the original license incompatible with the GPL (read
> more on http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html). Advertising clauses
> make licenses carrying them incompatible with the GPL.
>
> That's why the new David Dawes' XFree86 license is incompatible with
> GPL and the modified BSD license is not.
>
The XFree86 1.1 License does not an "advertising clause," as you say
that the originaly BSD license has. That clause (number 3 in XF86 1.1
to be specific) says nothing about advertising, it is talking about
retaining an acknowledgement in the binary software and the documentation.
The modified BSD license says something similar
<http://www.xfree86.org/3.3.6/COPYRIGHT2.html#4>:
"2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution."
I really don't understand how that does not break
"You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise
of the rights granted herein," (GPL) nor do I understand how the rest of
the XFree86 1.1 license does not conflict with GPL given that GPL has
such a clause.
God, I wish some lawyers used GNU/Linux.
Peace,
William
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