dbus: Proposed relicense to MIT/X11

[Dave Meikle]

Hi,

My contribution was so trivially it doesn't seem right to reply to this,
however I am happy for it to be relicensed under the terms in the email
below.

Regards,
Dave Meikle

-----Original Message-----
From: Ryan Lortie [mailto:desrt at desrt.ca] 
Sent: 13 September 2007 20:18
To: dbus at lists.freedesktop.org
Subject: dbus: Proposed relicense to MIT/X11

[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