[Legal] XFree86

[Fedor Zuev]

On Mon, 1 Mar 2004, Sinom wrote:

S>> http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=297

S>Да я уже видел это. Но тут нет ничего.
S>Вот всё, что есть "полезного" по этой ссылке:

S>So what is the problem with the new license? "The details of the requirement
S>conflict with the GNU GPL," Stallman explained, "anyone linking GPL-covered
S>applications with that XFree86 code would be violating the GPL."

S>Хотелось бы развёрнутый комментарий.


Ну вот такое, например.

Сам я не проверял, а в этом листе имеют тенденцию зело привирать по
части критериев, но, во всяком случаи, претензии таковы

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>Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 12:31:44 -0700
>From: paul cannon <pik на debian.org>
>To: debian-legal на lists.debian.org
>Subject: XFree86 license difficulties
>
>Since this issue has made it to slashdot [1], it may be the appropriate
>time for some discussion here. I haven't seen any here yet, but I may
>not have looked hard enough, so apologies in advance if this is old
>news.
>
>To summarize, an announcement [2] by David Dawes from last night indicates
>that the XFree86 Project, Inc. intends to release version 4.4.0 with a
>different license than the one it had before.
>
>The project has made available a diff [3] (subject to change, one would
>assume) of the changes to be applied to the source to get the new
>license in the applicable files.
>
>The actual changes to the license are detailed at
>http://www.xfree86.org/legal/licenses.html.
>
>The new license has a reworded disclaimer, and a numbered list of terms
>instead of the terms simply being stated. It goes farther than the old
>one in specifying that the conditions apply to binary distributions as
>well as source.
>
>The change that causes problems is the addition of the third condition:
>
>]  3. The end-user documentation included with the redistribution, if
>]     any, must include the following acknowledgment: "This product
>]     includes software developed by The XFree86 Project, Inc
>]     (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors", in the same place
>]     and form as other third-party acknowledgments. Alternately, this
>]     acknowledgment may appear in the software itself, in the same form
>]     and location as other such third-party acknowledgments.
>
>Several posters on slashdot and elsewhere have mentioned the similarity
>between this and the old, obnoxious BSD "advertising clause":
>
>]  3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this
>]     software must display the following acknowledgement:
>]        This product includes software developed by the University of
>]        California, Berkeley and its contributors.
>
>The FSF is quite clear [4],[5] in that they do not consider licenses with
>the advertising clause to be compatible with the GPL. In addition, the
>same reasons they give appear to apply also to the clause added by the
>XFree86 folks. That is, one cannot distribute something under the GPL
>with added restrictions like the one above quoted.
>
>Since it appears that the new XFree86 license will be GPL-incompatible
>(although still DFSG-free(?)), what issues does this raise for Debian?
>Is there any chance, at this point, of convincing the XFree86 Project,
>Inc. not to make those changes in the license?
>
>As we all know, the FSF [6] considers the mere act of linking to create a
>derived work for the purposes of the GPL, and claims anything linked to
>a GPL'd work must also be distributable under the terms of the GPL.
>
>If the XFree86 Project takes a similar stance (which, indeed, does not
>seem to be the case right now) then anything linked to an XFree86
>library must be distributable under the terms of the XFree86 license.
>That case would add somewhat deeper problems than simple license
>incompatibility; it would mean no program could link against both Xlib
>and a GPL'd library. This would seem to make it impossible to distribute
>Qt, for example.
>
>If XFree86 does not consider linking to create a derived work which must
>carry the same restrictions as those in the library, then it does not
>seem there is a problem; an application linking against Qt and Xlib
>could be solely under the GPL. Or am I off my rocker here?
>
>Is it likely that the XFree86 Project will take that stance on linking?
>
>paul
>
>[1] http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/30/140205
>[2] http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/forum/2004-January/001892.html
>[3] http://www.xfree86.org/license-200401.diff.gz
>[4] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses
>[5] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#OrigBSD
>[6] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWithGPL
>