dbus: Proposed relicense to MIT/X11

[Christian Ehrlicher]

Ryan Lortie schrieb:
> [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.
> 
I've no problems with the license change.

Christian Ehrlicher

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