License question - SGI FSL B

[Tom 'spot' Callaway]

On Mon, 2006-11-27 at 18:51 +0000, 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.

Right now, the short answer is no, no new code under SGI FreeB is
permitted in Fedora. Stay tuned for the longer answer.

~spot