Wayland not MIT-licensed / FAQ wrong

[Peter Hutterer]

On Sat, May 30, 2015 at 02:28:10PM +0300, Pekka Paalanen wrote:
> On Fri, 29 May 2015 22:15:10 +0200
> Markus Slopianka <kamikazow at gmx.de> wrote:
> 
> > On Friday 29 May 2015 18:55:43 Pekka Paalanen wrote:
> > 
> > > 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?
> > 
> > No, it has nothing to do with court cases.
> > FSF endorsement is important to some. I personally don't care but I'm also not 
> > a Wayland contributor which is why that's not a discussion I like to start.
> 
> Very good, I don't have any idea why I should care either.
> 
> Sorry if I seem so negative. The issue you raised is real, I
> totally agree on that. I also agree with changing the text.
> 
> My problem is that I cannot judge myself whether changing the text
> in any way is harmless, or whether it counts as relicensing.
> 
> Btw. the Wayland/Weston license is not exactly HPND either, HPND is
> missing "sell" and "without fee".

fwiw, the FSF version of the HPND has "without fee" bit but in a slightly
different wording.
http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:Historical_Permission_Notice_and_Disclaimer
HPND is listed as GPL compatible, which I guess is the only thing about the
FSF-endorsement that potentially matters. 
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#HPND
but since our wording is ever so sligthly different, I don't know what the
real effect is when you set lawyers on the trail.

I would venture that going to proper MIT wording counts as relicensing
because the two texts are not functionally equivalent: the "don't use my
name for advertising" is clearly missing.

AFAICT, the X11 license is functionally equivalent though:
http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:X11
but given that this is a significant rewording of the license text (even if
the functionality stays the same) we're basically down to: is this a license
change? and I'll have to shrug as well here and defer to the lawyers.

Cheers,
   Peter