On Sat, 22 May 2004 19:22:51 -0400, William M. Quarles <walrus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I don't want an endless discussion, far from it. People have put forth that the central issue here for why XFree86 is no longer part of Fedora Core is the license change and some conduct of the now-disbanded core team. If someone could just answer why the license is GPL incompatible while the modified BSD license is not, that would be enough for me.
The difference between the original BSD license and the modified BSD license is that the modified BSD license doesn't have the advertising clause that made the original license incompatible with the GPL (read more on http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html). Advertising clauses make licenses carrying them incompatible with the GPL.
That's why the new David Dawes' XFree86 license is incompatible with GPL and the modified BSD license is not.
The XFree86 1.1 License does not an "advertising clause," as you say that the originaly BSD license has. That clause (number 3 in XF86 1.1 to be specific) says nothing about advertising, it is talking about retaining an acknowledgement in the binary software and the documentation.
The modified BSD license says something similar <http://www.xfree86.org/3.3.6/COPYRIGHT2.html#4>:
"2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution."
I really don't understand how that does not break
"You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein," (GPL) nor do I understand how the rest of the XFree86 1.1 license does not conflict with GPL given that GPL has such a clause.
God, I wish some lawyers used GNU/Linux.
Peace, William
