Hi, On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 02:49:13PM -0400, Brett Smith wrote: > When we started looking at software for the SiliconMotion hardware (as > part of evaluating how free software-friendly a particular machine was), > we found a modified driver from the SiliconMotion company that seemed to > have some useful changes. The company was distributing it under GPLv2 > only. > > 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.
Fair enough -- sorry if my reply was a bit harsh. It'd be great if you guys were willing to work with SMI to get it relicensed to MIT/X11, as for better or worse, we only accept MIT/X11 or non-four-clause BSD. We do host the development of some GPL drivers (xf86-input-synaptics, xf86-video-avivo), but we don't distribute these as a part of X.Org at all. Even so, these are GPLv2 rather than GPLv3, which would be a lot more problematic. For legal issues, the Foundation Board (bo...@foundation.x.org) handles all of that, and just ask the list or myself about technical stuff (SMI driver, code hosting, etc). Cheers, Daniel
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