MIT copyrights in X.org source base...

Alan Coopersmith alan.coopersmith at sun.com
Mon Oct 9 13:39:03 PDT 2006


Jim Gettys wrote:
> Due to the Digital/Compaq/HP merger, and X.org's successor-in-interest
> to TOG, I think we have a chance to clean this up greatly. Scott
> Peterson, who is HP's lawyer on Free software and Open Source law has
> agreed in principle to letting us merge the Digital/Compaq/HP
> copyrights, and I propose we do so with X.org owned copyrights as well.
> If we can come up with exact language (nearly) everyone can agree with,
> maybe we can also get other companies and many individuals to change to
> a standard form as well, allowing us to go down to 1 line/copyright
> holder.

Code contributed by Sun in recent years has been using the generic form
("copyright holder" instead of company name in the text) of the license
that TOG/old X.Org published in X11R6.6 (but only on some files, not all,
to keep things fun), as you quoted in the excerpt you sent.   I could
probably get legal approval to relicense prior code from Sun under that
license fairly easily.   Switching to a license that was close to that
would be a little more work, but also probably not that hard, as long as
we stick to the basic MIT/BSD-without-advertising model.

-- 
	-Alan Coopersmith-           alan.coopersmith at sun.com
	 Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering



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