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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.
the source is still out there, worst case scenario - the license isn't gpl, and they don't change it to be so - some of the developers split off and recruit noobs, and we end up with a renamed X that everyone uses - that takes a little while to ramp back up to full speed.
It's not the end of the world, but it (could) be annoying, that's for sure. I think thorough investigation is needed (e.g. try reading the license)
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
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.
The requirement to add an acknowledgement (often called the "advertising clause") is something that's not present in the GPL. The GPL states that GPLed code may only be distributed if further requirements or restrictions above and beyond the GPL are not made. It's therefore impossible to satisfy the terms of both licenses simultaneously, and therefore the extra clause makes the new XFree license GPL incompatible.
Now, why's this a problem? The XFree project doesn't include GPLed code itself, so there are no concerns from that point of view. However, if any of the code in the X libraries falls under this new license, then the FSF's interpretation of the GPL means that you wouldn't be able to link any GPLed program against the X libraries and distribute it. That's fairly bad.
On the plus side, the freedesktop.org x libraries were branched from XFree before the license change - as a result, we can pretty much guarantee that there will be libraries available that can be used with GPLed code. The end result would probably be to reduce the amount of XFree code in a distribution, rather than to increase the credit that the XFree project wants. It's almost certainly a counter-productive move.
The BSD license, and the MIT license are both GPL compatible. In fact, most licenses more liberal than the GPL are compatible with it. Being GPL compatible simply means that you can include that code in GPL'ed code. For developers, having the X license be GPL-compatible is a good thing.
Of course, this issue brings up some schisms between the GPL and BSD communities. However, I find the attitude of the BSD proponents on this subject somewhat strange. By choosing the BSD license, you are giving people the right to do whatever they want with their work. This means that company could take your code and include it in a proprietory app, without releasing improvements back to the community. By their decision to license under BSD, developers indicate that they are okay with this. Why, then, should any of them get mad that other developers would include BSD code in GPL'ed programs? Is GPL worse than propietory???
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Here's the original BSD clause:
And here's the new XFree86 clause:
The problem with the original clause 3 of the BSD license is that it could lead to massive lists of acknowledgements tacked on to an advertisement meant to be fairly compact (e.g. a leaflette, banner ad, sign, billboard, whatever). This isn't the case with the new XFree86 license clause 3, where it only requires acknowledgement in the documentation or the software itself. While keeping track of those acknowledgements might prove difficult at times, it has nowhere NEAR the practical problems that the original BSD license had.
A GPL inkompatibel XMoose86 once bit my sister... No realli!...Mynd you, XMoose86 bites Kan be pretty nasti...
If the GPL is unwilling to be compatable with anyone else, why should anyone be too worried about being compatable with the GPL.
... unless you are someone who feels threatened by free software in general, or people who differ from your vision of free software in particular, and therefor prefer fragmentation over cooperation.
The GPL has been THE reference license since probably before you were born (tongue in cheek).
BSD and GPL are the two original free software licenses. The BSD folks have made an effort to insure that the BSD license is compatible with the GPL not because they share the GNU philosophy (they don't), but to avoid fragmenting the free software world through stupid licensing incompatibilities. FreeBSD changed their license to make it GPL compatible, and GPL v. 2 was changed likewise to be compatible with a wider range of interests (including commercial interests that are shared with the BSD community).
The GPL is the only license many enterprises will consider releasing their erstwhile proprietary code under, as it protects them from having competitors snatch up their code and incorporate it into a competing proprietary product (in their view, competing GPLed products are not an issue, as they can reincorporate the best improvement into their GPLed product). Many of us who write code will not consider a BSD style license because we do not want our code used by freeloaders who incorporate it into non-free, proprietary products.
There are enough (perhaps a majority, even) free software and open source developers who feel this way that the GPL is, if not the majority license, a sufficiently large piece of the OSS / FSS pie that being incompatible with it means losing a huge portion of the community's input and integration.
FreeBSD, as vehement as their disagreement with the GPL is, chose to deliberately modify their license to make it compatible with the GPL for exactly these reasons: because there is room in the community for both views, but no reason whatsoever to fragment the community over those views.
After all, if one licenses under a *BSD style license, and if therefor one doesn't mind having their code placed into a proprietary product, why should one mind having it incorporated into a GPLed product (unless one's goal is simply to fragment the free software world and undermine the cooperation that makes it so effective).
Which makes one wonder about the motives of someone who would post such an inane comment actively encouraging such small minded thinking ("we don't use their license, we don't like them, so why should we cooperate!")
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
If they go with a more proprietary license, they should probably also change their name to Ex-Free86. :P
Actually this is not really the case if you take GPL seriously. GPL is like a prion, anything it touches is meant to turn into itself. The whole objective of GPL is deliberately and explicitly to prevent commercial exploitation. If you think differently then you have never met RMS in person and listened to him for more than 30 minutes.
I used to share an office building with RMS. I think the only person who really takes RMS and the GPL seriously is Bill Gates. Bill does believe in IP rights and so he takes the GPL as RMS intends it to be read, not as most people read it.
Take the linked screed on the 'advertisement' clause. Not having an advertisement clause is the single biggest mistake we made with the Web. If libwww had had an advertisement clause Marc Andressen and NCSA could not have plagarised the work in the way they did, they would have had to tell people that the majority of the code in Mosaic had been written at CERN. With no advertisement clause there was no requirement to tell anyone about CERN and so until about 1995 almost every press report on the Web either did not mention Tim Berners-Lee and CERN at all or did so as an afterthought.
Meanwhile Marc Andressen created a huge PR machine at Netscape dedicated to promoting Marc as the lone inventor of the Web. The fact that Eric Bina not Marc really wrote Mosaic was also rewritten. Netscape even sponsored a book to promote this revisionist history - see Architects of the Web, not only is there no chapter on Tim, the only time he is mentioned is to attack him with lies.
So no, do not take RMS's advice he has only a slight connection with reality. RMS believes in a version of anti-corporativist activism that is considered fringe by the type of people who still believe that there is no difference between Al Gore and George Bush, and plan to vote for Ralph Nader in November.
So no, not being GPL compatible is not a bug, it is something very positive that should be applauded.
As for RMS's rant on the advertising clause, it would be very easy to write a C macro and some perl scripts that compile the relevant notice section automatically. BSD does not tell every user what it is the product of Berkley every time they start a shell script. If it writes anything to the console during boot well who reads that anyway? All you need is a single one line command to print out the list of contributors. Call it credits or something.
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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.)
I don't see any moral difference between RMS insisting that you call the operating system "GNU/Linux" and the XFree86 people insisting they get credit for their work. (Technically I see a difference, as there's nothing forcing you to call it GNU/Linux. But morally it's the same thing.)