jschauma writes "It appears that, unlike many other Open Source projects, NetBSD did not find any serious problems
with the much-debated license change of XFree86 4.4.0: it was just imported
into the tree."
Well, since the dispute was about weather or not the new XFree86 licens was GPL-compatable, and NetBSD isn't under the GPL, you wouldn't expect them to have a problem.
At least one BSD is unhappy about the prospect of the new license and is threatening to fork. Hopefully everyone can get together and have a single fork with a license like the older X license if it does end up coming to a fork.
-- And the muscular cyborg German dudes dance with sexy French Canadians
Can someone explain why open source projects are rejecting the new XFree86 license? I looked it over and it looked OK to me, at least for BSD-licensed projects.
I also looked at the license, looks OK. Maybe it's a practical matter, that with the old license you don't have to do anything. But with the new license you have to remember to say "This product includes..." blaa. I think this practice is already a problem, see for example this blaa blaa blaa. Since NetBSD also does that blaa, I don't think they mind XFree86 doing that too... I totally understand all projects rejecting new license, since they can spend less time on blaa blaa blaa.
FreeBSD will too, probably
by
marcovje
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I saw several comments on the freebsd-ports list that the FreeBSD troops see no problem in the adoption either.
The reason was also the same, clientside libs seem to go free.
Re:FreeBSD
by
BattleBlow
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
However, this is a completely different situation than NetBSD importing it.
NetBSD and OpenBSD both distribute X as a distribution set, that is, as part of the main operating system. They maintain a separate source tree for X inside their main repositories.
This is quite different from being part of the FreeBSD ports collection which houses a diverse collection of third party software, much of which would never be incorporated into FreeBSD itself due to license incompatbilities. So, the question of whether FreeBSD has a problem is not being addressed by its presence in the ports collection since the ports collection can contain pretty much anything, including ports of commercial software.
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And the rest of us will use XOrg
Well, since the dispute was about weather or not the new XFree86 licens was GPL-compatable, and NetBSD isn't under the GPL, you wouldn't expect them to have a problem.
Can someone explain why open source projects are rejecting the new XFree86 license? I looked it over and it looked OK to me, at least for BSD-licensed projects.
I saw several comments on the freebsd-ports list that the FreeBSD troops see no problem in the adoption either.
The reason was also the same, clientside libs seem to go free.
NetBSD and OpenBSD both distribute X as a distribution set, that is, as part of the main operating system. They maintain a separate source tree for X inside their main repositories.
This is quite different from being part of the FreeBSD ports collection which houses a diverse collection of third party software, much of which would never be incorporated into FreeBSD itself due to license incompatbilities. So, the question of whether FreeBSD has a problem is not being addressed by its presence in the ports collection since the ports collection can contain pretty much anything, including ports of commercial software.