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XFree86 Alters License
kinema writes "According to the XFree86 announcement starting with XFree86 v4.4.0-RC3 there will be a new license. There are some worries that these changes might be incompatible with the GPL." The FSF has a good page about the problems with BSD-style advertising clauses, which ironically uses XFree86's old license as an example of one to emulate.
This only seems to concern documentation, not ads, so the problems described on the FSF page are not quite as bad - full page of credits on ad may be bad, but full page of credits among hundreds of other pages of documentation isn't nearly as big deal.
Anyway this seems to be rather stupid move, XFree86 seems to have enough problems (infighting, resulting diverting and forks...) already without any license trouble. If it ends up incompatible, all the more reason to concentrate on those, if the XFree86 folks want to shoot themselves to foot and slowly bleed to death, it's their choice - very stupid one but it's their nevertheless.
Well, since the original license was a BSD license, no. Anyone can take their code and redistribute it under any license they want to, including one that specifically forbids the original developers from using the new distribution. The BSD license isn't designed to protect the "rights" of the developers, it's designed to let anyone use the source in any way they want to.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Here is a human-translated version of the german article:
The upcoming version of XFree86 is, due to a change in the licensing agreement, incompatible with the well-known GPL, and linking GPL applications with XFree86 will present itself as "problematic."
The troubles in the XFree-86 camp have just died down, but a further problem is beating at the gates. As David Dawes from the XFree-86 Project shared, the XFree-86 Project is changing its license to a new version 1.1. A change in the license does not, in principle, present a reason for causing problems, restrictive licensces have become more liberal in the past. The situation is, however, this time more problematic - the XFree86 license is getting more restrictive.
The license can still be seen as very liberal - all programs under the "XFree86 License 1.1" can be used, published, and advertised without the publication of the source code. A new addition, however, is a clause which states that every distribution and every product that contain XFree86 must affix a remark, either in the documentation or in the application ("This product includes software developed by The XFree86 Project, Inc (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors"). This is problematic, as the Free Software Foundation has remarked in another case.
The organization has classified the first version of the BSD license as not GPL-compatible in the past, and expressed doubts reguarding the linking of GPL and BST applications. The famous "BSD Advertising Clause" doesn't make the license non-free, but causes ither problems, including an incompatability with the GNU GPL, and for that reason the foundation [GNU] has asked the Free Software Foundation in the past to use the XFree86 license, because it is largely compatible with the BSD license and does not include the feared advertising clause. And with that may be the end, because assigning the BSD-clause as "GPL incompatible" makes the new XFree86 License for GPL applications automatically problematic.
The resolts of the earlier BSD License's declaration could have far-reaching effects for the distributors as well as for other manufacturers. GPL applications are allowed to be linked to a GPL incompatible library, with the need for a remark in the source code - a condition that will be met by very few applications. When the remark is not present, the linking is not allowed.
If XFree86 doesn't change its license, and the Free Software Foundation doesn't change its declaration, then the latest version of XFree86 will also be the last release rolled out by the distributors, because it is questionable whether distributors will get involved with a "problematic" use of the software. When the license is not changed, the options will be either freedesktop.org, Xouvert, or a new fork. Developers could be not entirely dissatisfied. As Pro-Linux from KDE-developer circles experienced, the developers are also not entirely satisfied with XFree86 and are still thinking about changing to freedesktop.org (thanks to rene.)