I understand there is a history of a war about the Xfree licensing. I honestly am not try to bait or troll with this post, so please give some consideration to this post ...
I'm trying to figure out what the "new" xfree licensing means to *developers* (hence the post in this venue). There seem to be three types of scenarios that a "developer" might fall in to. #1 ... You are a hardware vendor wanting to provide an X11 windowing system to your boxes. You write a ddx to your hardware. #2 ... You are a software vendor wanting to provide an X11 windowing system to a platform. You write a ddx to your platform. #3 ... You are a "solutions" provider, and want to provide an X11 windowing system as a part of your solution. You redistribute an existing X11 distribution as a part of your solution. Examples would be ... Case #1 includes cray, sun, hp, etc ... they have traditionally used the xorg base and write a ddx to their hardware. The contributions back to the "community" are at their choosing. This may also include a video card manufacturer who wants to provide a "driver" for their proprietary card. Case #2 includes PC Xserver vendors (e.g. Hummingbird, WRQ, etc) ... they again use the xorg base and write a ddx to their platform. Again their contributions back are at their choosing. Case #3 includes the "free" OS providers (aka RedHat, etc) ... they distribute a built version of an Xserver and associated utilities. So, can someone lay down what the "XFree" licensing means to these three classes of "developers"? The Xorg license is pretty clear in all three cases (e.g. do what you will, don't claim you invented it). >From what I can gather, much of the Xfree code also falls under the original MIT license (unless I'm mistaken and the Xorg folks relinguished their copyright to dix, mi, cfb, etc). Of course there is also much code in Xfree that is *not* a part of the Xorg tee (i.e. the xfree ddx tree). Then there is the "programs" included in both trees (xterm, xlogo, xdpyinfo, etc). And let's not forget the contribs (e.g. opengl from sgi with it's own license). I guess all I'm looking for is a "spirit" of the latest XFree86 license regarding the various components of Xfree86 (laywers and the courts will battle over the legaility of whatever license is written). Is this an accurate "spirit" then .... The "Xlib" (i.e xc/lib/*) is under "MIT" license (they hold copyright, so their license). The "Programs" (i.e xc/programs/xterm?xlogo?xinit etc) is under "MIT" license (they hold copyright, so their license). The "DIX" (i.e. xc.programs/Xserver/dix?mi?cfb?mfb?...) is under "MIT" license (they hold copyright, so their license). The "XFree86 DDX family" (i.e. xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86) is under the XFree86 license (whatever form the copyright holder feels free to invoke). The "Xnest DDX" (i.e. xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xnest) is under whoever wrote it's license (i dunno, duncare, but someone) The "Contribs" (i.e. xc/contrib/*) are under the license of the "contributor" ... If that is accurate then ... Developer #1 above can then use the Xfree86 code distro under an MIT license (unless they utilize the xfree86 ddx code, and then they fall under that license). Utilizing "contribs" places them under the "contribs" license as well. The above would be the same for developer #2. (i.e under the license of the ddx code you base from, and the contribs you choose to use). Developer #3 is in a murky situation to me ... but then again sort of the same. Again, I am not trying to bait or troll here, I just want an understanding of the "spirit" of the license XFree86 has gone to, and how that applies to the various components of the tree. Rob _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
