Synaptics MIT license, again

Carlos Corbacho cathectic at gmail.com
Mon May 21 04:53:35 PDT 2007


> The wording here is a little confused. Perhaps:
> 
> Tell the developers/contributors that the GPLv2 license is incompatible
> with the MIT/X11 license (in that MIT/X11 code cannot include GPLv2 code,
> even though GPLv2 can include MIT/X11). Some lawyers argue that including
> GPLv2 code in the MIT/X11 licensed X.Org tree would turn the whole X.Org
> project into a GPLv2 project (the situation is legally not very clear).
> For this reason, X.Org has opted to steer clear of this by insisting that
> all code distributed as part of X.Org is MIT/X11 licensed.

Well, based on Daniel Stone's latest e-mail clarifying the X.Org position,
time to rewrite that part completely. Here's a better alternative:

Tell the developers/contributors that X.Org policy is only to allow MIT/X11
licensed code, as X.Org's goal (as well as shipping a working X that others
can directly use) is to produce a Standard Implementation which others can
then build upon to make their own non-GPL (either another open/ free
license or proprietary) X - the GPL does not allow this.

-Carlos
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