XFree86 gone from Fedora Core? WHY!?

William M. Quarles quarlewm at jmu.edu
Fri May 21 05:08:28 UTC 2004


Craig White wrote:
> You know, if I completely didn't understand the concept of GPL/BSD type
> licenses, project forking and the reasons and suitability for forking, I
> would probably keep my mouth shut to hide the fact that I was too
> ignorant to discuss these issues intelligently but hey, that's just the
> way I am.
> 
> Craig
> 

Sounds like you are writing flamebait.  Why don't you insult me directly?

I'll admit, I don't know a lick about forking, and I don't see why it's 
relevant here.  My complaint was how Fedora was referring to XFree86 as 
if it were a long deprecated standard, and X.org as the new shit, while 
X.org is nothing more than rewrapped XFree86 code.  However, I wasn't 
aware that the "projects" had "forked."  X.org was merely a standards 
organization initially.  The corporations and their money changed it.

However, since you brought up licensing issues, let's talk:
-Check out my other messages on this thread
-Everyone keeps bring up "the advertising clause, THE ADVERTISING 
CLAUSE."  There was an advertising clause in verion 1.0, too.  The 
advertising clause hasn't changed.  It just says you can't advertise 
with the XFree86 name.  That is not the same as the orginal BSD license 
advertising clause, which allowed for advertising, but required a notice 
to be displayed.
-If anything, the XFree86 1.1 License seems to be a lot closer to the 
modified BSD license than it was before with version 1.0.  The Clauses 2 
and 3 of the XFree86 1.1 License are essentially the same as Clause 2 of 
the modified BSD license.  So if the modified BSD license does not 
conflict with GPL, and the XFree86 1.1 license is basically the same as 
the modified BSD license, WHAT THE HELL IS THE BIG DEAL that makes the 
XFree86 license GPL-incompatible?  Please enlighten my ignorant ass if I 
have missed anything here, flamebaiter.

Again, I also emphasize, (as I said in one of my other posts on this 
thread), the client-side libraries od are still under XFree86 1.0 
License, so as far as I understand the GPL licensing issues, they are 
pretty much irrelevant, as they have left all parts of the code that 
risk conflicting with GPLed code with the Version 1.0 license.

Peace,
William





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