Wayland not MIT-licensed / FAQ wrong

[Pekka Paalanen]

On Fri, 29 May 2015 15:25:44 +0200
Markus Slopianka <kamikazow at gmx.de> wrote:

> On Friday 29 May 2015 10:21:00 Pekka Paalanen wrote:
> 
> > I've always been confused with the myriad of slightly differently
> > worded "MIT-like" licences.
> 
> Me too. That's why I personally like the BSD licenses most where IMO the 
> language is the easiest to understand but that's just my opinion and not the 
> reason why I wrote the mail.
> 
> > but I don't know who Markus is
> 
> Not sure if my background matters but just for full disclosure:
> I was a German KDE translator (before I decided to just use all my systems in 
> English), managed one or two K3b releases (before CD burning died), started 
> packaging Linux software a few months ago (for Fedora and openSUSE), 
> contribute to OpenStreetMap and OpenWLANMap, and I am a Wikipedia editor since 
> over 12 years, although these days I mostly look over a few Linux-related 
> articles to make sure the info there is not wrong.

Hi,

nice to hear about you. :-)

Like we all, you don't have any lawyer background, it seems.

> > I do not trust Wikipedia.
> 
> I can't and won't speak for the entire Wikipedia community.
> I'm mostly interested that the articles I watch over are correct.
> Wayland's licensing caused some confusion which is why I wrote my mail.

Sure, that's great. I just mean that I will not take any legal
advice from Wikipedia articles, or any advice with serious
implications unless I can verify it. Just like I don't take any
health advice from unofficial or commercial sites.

> > I would probably trust information officially published by
> > opensource.org and FSF, so pointers there that we can and should do
> > this change would be appreciated.
> 
> Well, I linked to the opensource.org license text where it says in red letters 
> that the HPND "has been voluntarily deprecated by its author" but here it is 
> again: http://opensource.org/licenses/HPND

Yes, I read that. There is not even a mention of what should be
used instead, while I was looking for justification for "we can just
change the wording without a unanimous agreement". That really
would be the most attractive approach to me, too.

It would be awesome if opensource.org said for HPND: "You are
recommended to switch from this wording to <another licence> that
is <better>, and you can do that without getting a sign-off from
everyone".

What is the benefit of using a licence that has been officially
endorsed by FSF? Is that a prerequisite for FSF to defend a project
in court?

The ice here is not as thick as I'd like, but I can still walk on
it. I think.


Thanks,
pq