On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 02:49:13PM -0400, Brett Smith wrote:
Some of the developers who were packaging software for the machine
pointed out that this license was unfortunate for them, because they
were interested in getting GRUB running on the box as well, and of
course, GPLv2-only is not a compatible license for a GPLv3-covered
project like GRUB. With that issue in front of him, RMS asked
SiliconMotion to allow the code to be used under the terms of GPLv3, one
way or another, which they agreed to.
Please don't read any malice into that request, because I assure you
there was none. The FSF has consistently advocated that developers
should use licenses that are consistent with the larger projects they
interact with (as long as those licenses are free and GPL-compatible),
and that advice definitely applies to Xorg drivers. If we made a
mistake here, it was a failure to connect the dots. As weird as it
might sound, I don't think it was clear at the time that we were talking
about the licensing of an entire Xorg driver. If we had known that, we
would've asked SiliconMotion to switch to the X11 license, if possible,
to stay consistent with Xorg generally.
And I'm happy to talk to SiliconMotion about that now. I don't know if
you have a usual way of handling licensing requests like this, but if
you want me to keep anybody or any lists in the loop on that thread,
that's no problem either; just let me know. And either way, if you have
any other questions or concerns about this, please don't hesitate to ask
me.
A switch in the siliconmotion improved stuff to MIT/X11 would be very
beneficial to the BSDs, and X as a whole since it could be part of the
main X distribution.
I would appreciate it if you would keep me (at this address or
o...@openbsd.org) informed about any progress on this.
on another note, I have a lemote in the post, so I may be able to look
at some of the Lynx EM+ issues. I was considering doing a kms driver
when i've got OpenBSDs kms infrastructure thrashed out.
-0-
--
There's no room in the drug world for amateurs.
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