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

[Donnie Berkholz <spyderous@gentoo.org>]

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On Wed, 2004-02-18 at 10:13, CJ Kucera wrote:
> Yeah, I figured that livecds and GRP packages would have to stay at
> the 4.3 version.  But I'm still a bit hazy on what would prevent a
> simple ebuild from living in Portage's tree.  It seems to me that,
> among the 300+ licenses which *are* acceptable in Portage, this new
> one couldn't be the "worst" of them.  Wasn't there some work being
> done to provide an "ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES" var or something?  So
> someone not wanting to deal with the extra requirements in the
> new XFree license wouldn't have to worry about having it installed.

Here's a paragraph I wrote earlier:

"If Gentoo distributes a GPL program or driver that can build against
any of the XFree86-licensed sources (for example, the SDK), Gentoo
probably violates the GPL. If Gentoo distributes a GPL XFree86 driver
(for example, x11-misc/synaptics) that can load into this X server,
Gentoo probably violates the GPL."

This is because the GPL requires the complete work to be licensed
without any additional restrictions than the GPL, and the complete work
would include any files the synaptics driver built against, and
potentially even any files in the X server the synaptics driver loads
into. The new license creates such restrictions in multiple files that
are built into the resulting X server. I haven't researched whether the
exact files the synaptics driver builds against are under this new
license, but it's quite possible that the "complete work" would be
considered not just those files but the complete SDK (software
development kit), which external drivers such as synaptics can build
against.

It's not that the new license of XFree86 explicitly prevents us from
providing it, rather that when combined with the GPL of various external
drivers the results are questionable. Just settling to not provide these
drivers is unacceptable.

And again, there are other issues that I mentioned in my earlier email
such as the closed development and so forth. This license change is more
significant when viewed in context of what else has been going on within
XFree86. I'll refer you to my old reference list and the
devel@xfree86.org and forum@xfree86.org archives for more information --
Google for them if you can't find them.

Thanks,
Donnie
-- 
Donnie Berkholz
Desktop project co-manager,
Cluster project co-lead,
Developer Relations,
Gentoo Linux

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