dbus: Proposed relicense to MIT/X11

[Ryan Lortie]

[This email has been sent to the dbus mailing list and to everyone who
has ever contributed to dbus.  This e-mail is a first pass; a second
email will probably be sent after I discover working email addresses for
the bounces I get from this email.]

You are receiving this email because you have, in some way, contributed
to dbus.

dbus is currently made available under the union of The Academic Free
License version 2.1 and the GNU General Public License version 2.

This combination of licences prevents some free software applications
from legally using dbus.  A very simple example is GPLv3 applications
(GPL versions 2 and 3 are incompatible).  There are other examples as
well.

There was a meeting of dbus developers at GUADEC and it was agreed by
all present that it would be best to move dbus to a MIT/X11 style
licence.

The AFL 2.1 (under which dbus is currently available) is almost the same
as the X11 licence except for the patent clause in the AFL.  The patent
clause is thought to be so weak as to be nearly ineffective.  The clause
causes confusion, though, and more importantly, introduces GPL
incompatibility.

The text of the proposed new licence (MIT/X11) is as follows:

      Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
      obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
      files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
      restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy,
      modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies
      of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
      furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

      The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
      included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

      THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
      EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
      MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
      NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
      HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
      WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
      OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER
      DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Of course, in order to complete the relicense, we need the approval of
all contributors to the affected code.

Please "reply to all" to this email (ie: sending replies to
<desrt at desrt.ca> and <dbus at lists.freedesktop.org>) indicating your
willingness or unwillingness to have your contributions to dbus
relicensed under the above terms.

Even if you believe your contributions to be trivial, please reply.

If you have no idea what this email is about, then I apologise, but
still ask that you please contact me directly (Ryan Lortie
<desrt at desrt.ca>).

Cheers
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