Re: [gentoo-dev] No XFree86 w/ new license

[George Shapovalov]

On Thursday 19 February 2004 14:10, Stewart Honsberger wrote:
> So the only problem with this whole mess is that the XFree people want
> us to give them credit in the same place and mannar as we already give
> other third parties credit?
Not just that.
gnu.org page has a discussion on where such clause leads over time and why 
similar one has been pulled off the original BSD license.

But that's not the main problem. The real issue is the GPL compatibility, in a 
sense that including XFree86 under this license makes it illegal to 
distribute *a lot* of GPL packages. So, have xfree86-4.4 all you want, but 
then no kde/gnome for you (or the majority of wm's) ;). 
Well, this is not so much the issue for the end user, as long as he fetches 
and builds X and the rest of the linked packages himself, but even then, in 
order to give that CD to somebody else, he will have to do a few (just tiny 
for now) additional motions. Well, may be not that tiny, since IIRC one of 
them includes contacting X people (core team as I understand, which seems to 
be just one person at the moment. But I may be way off here, so don't cite 
me).

So, to reiterate, as a distribution we cannot include both X under the new 
license and the apps that link against it as we will be breaking the law.


> I'd really like a point-by-point dissection of the objectionable license
> changes so we can see the exact reasons why it's unacceptable. Thus far
> here, other distribution mail list archives, and even on the LKML all
> I've seen is vague accusations that XFree86 is "no longer free" and
> "unacceptable" for inclusion/distribution.
Than you really ought to go through those links supplied in the original 
announcement, including the discussion on the cited lists. 

George


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