[plug] Why XFree86 Licence 1.1 is a problem (was: Y-Windows)

[Leon Brooks]

On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 09:22, sscott at iinet.net.au wrote:
> What's the big deal anyway? Are people having problems with the
> notion that they cant claim they wrote XFree86, or is this a more
> technical licensing issue?

The restriction that developers *must* include an advertising clause 
conflicts with the GPL's "no further restrictions" clause. This causes 
problems with building GPLed utilities against it, or including GPLed 
components within it. Naturally, a GPL-centric distribution will trip 
over this.

The FSF are apparently not viewing this with any great alarm, and it 
seems likely that GPLv3, when it happens, is likely to specifically 
allow for the option of this restriction. Until then the problem 
stands, and unfortunately "ignore it" is not a long-term wise decision.

The Cooker people would be quite happy to add a splash screen to XFree86 
(or even outside it in Mandrake's startup sequence), but are not happy 
with a _requirement_ to do so, because of said conflict.

Meanwhile, Mandrake faces another problem, in that the owner of 
"Mandrake the Magician" has decided that their use of the name 
"Mandrake" in connection with a wizardy mascot constitutes infringement 
of their rights.

The other X problem is that there is now a written-permission-first 
clause about using "XFree", which to me looks ominously like setting-up 
work for a more burdensome licence system.

Cheers; Leon