License question - SGI FSL B

[Hans de Goede]

Ian Chapman wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Is software licensed under or derived from the SGI FSL B
> (http://oss.sgi.com/projects/FreeB/) suitable for inclusion in FE? I
> would like to migrate GLEW (http://glew.sourceforge.net/) to FE if
> possible, yet it's various parts are licensed under GPL / BSD / GLX
> Public License and the SGI FSL B.
> 
> According to gnu.org this license is not free because:
> 
> "The "SGI Free Software License B", although its name says "free", is
> not a Free Software License. It has three major problems. 1. It
> restricts its patent license to unmodified versions of the software. 2.
> It terminates if your use of the software infringes copyrights or
> patents which are not SGI's. This is problematic because it gives SGI
> grounds to sue you even when you have done nothing to them. 3. The
> license requires you to inform SGI of legal problems with the software.
> This violates your privacy rights, and can conflict with professional
> confidentiality requirements, such as attorney-client privilege."
> 
> This implies it's not suitable however certain parts of Mesa and other
> packages are included in core that are licensed under SGI FSL B.
> 
> Thanks.
> 

glew is in Debian main, I didn't take a closer look if they stripped
parts or something like that, but except for that, if its free enough
for Debian its free enough for FE. Know I now my last legalish mail to
this list about lbreakout shows that Debian gets legalise wrong
sometimes too, that was a trademark issue and AFAIK Debian is much more
strict with regards to the actual sourcecode licenses.

Regards,

Hans