Wayland not MIT-licensed / FAQ wrong

[Peter Hutterer]

On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 04:11:56PM +0800, Jonas Ådahl wrote:
> On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 10:21:00AM +0300, Pekka Paalanen wrote:
> > On Thu, 28 May 2015 14:15:52 -0700
> > Kristian Høgsberg <krh at bitplanet.net> wrote:
> > 
> > > Yes, it appears you're correct. The HPND license is widely used in X
> > > (even new additions such as
> > > http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/tree/dri3/dri3.c) and I think
> > > I assumed it was the most recent/modern version of the MIT license. It
> > > was certainly the intention to change the license to MIT and that's
> > > what all contributors acknowledged when we relicensed. Let's wait a
> > > few days and see if anybody objects, but otherwise I think it'd be
> > > fine to just change the Wayland and Weston licenses to the actual MIT
> > > license.
> > 
> > I certainly do not object personally, but I can only agree from my
> > personal own behalf.
> > 
> > > On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 5:06 AM, Markus Slopianka <kamikazow at gmx.de> wrote:
> > > > Hi there.
> > > > I'm one of the authors of Wayland's Wikipedia article
> > > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_%28display_server_protocol%29>.
> > > > While writing it we noticed some discrepancies in your licensing.
> > > >
> > > > Your FAQ states that Wayland is MIT-licensed
> > > > <http://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.html#heading_toc_j_1> although the actual
> > > > license text <http://cgit.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland/tree/COPYING> uses
> > > > the wording from the deprecated Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer
> > > > (HPND) license <http://opensource.org/licenses/HPND>.
> > > >
> > > > This, btw, also leads to the weird situation that this particular wording has
> > > > not been declared a Free Software license and GPL-compatible by the FSF (even
> > > > though there are no clauses that would prevent that).
> > > >
> > > > The HPND is also not just a simple re-wording of the MIT license because the
> > > > HPND carries a no-promotion clause like §3 of the 3-clause BSD license
> > > > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#3-clause>.
> > > >
> > > > The easy but still awkward solution (because the HPND is deprecated) is to
> > > > simply fix the FAQ.
> > > > However, I'd suggest to replace the HPND text with the 3-clause BSD license.
> > > > The 3-clause BSD license is functionally the same, just with different wording.
> > > > As such replacing the license text would IMO not be a re-licensing of Wayland
> > > > in the sense that each developer (or 95%, according to Mozilla
> > > > <https://blogs.fsfe.org/ciaran/?p=58>) would have to agree with it.
> > > > As I see it, it would merely be a editorial change like correcting bad grammar
> > > > or a typo.
> > 
> > So the core of the complaint is that we call the license we use by a
> > wrong name?
> 
> The core complaint is that we say we use the MIT license, but in fact
> the license text used in the source code and in COPYING is not the MIT
> license, but the HPND license text. So I guess, more or less that, yes.
> 
> > 
> > And we really should be using an exact text that has been explicitly
> > endorsed by FSF? For benefits I can believe are there, but I'm not
> > aware of.
> > 
> > I've always been confused with the myriad of slightly differently
> > worded "MIT-like" licences.
> > 
> > How can I trust that you know better, and this really is ok? Just
> > wondering since I do not have the faintest clue about legal issues,
> > except that common sense does not apply. I trust Kristian, but I don't
> > know who Markus is, and I do not trust Wikipedia.
> > 
> > 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.
> > 
> > Nevertheless, if no-one objects, I won't either.
> 
> IANAL, but I have no objections either.
> 
> I wonder how this affects libinput, originally being more or less a fork
> of weston. Peter?

without manually trawling through patchsets the basic rule is: if you're in
the git log, you have copyright. that could be trimmed down by weeding out
authors that e.g. only ever worked in those bits that had nothing to do with
input but it quickly gets hairy about what is and what isn't derivative
work.

I'll wait until we have some idea of what to do with wayland/weston before I
decide for libinput. The author list is significantly shorter, so in theory
a relicensing is doable but I'm not yest sure it's worth it if
wayland/weston stick with different licenses.

Cheers,
   Peter