Synaptics MIT license, again

Egbert Eich eich at suse.de
Mon May 21 09:55:29 PDT 2007


Carlos Corbacho writes:
 > > The wording here is a little confused. Perhaps:
 > > 
 > > Tell the developers/contributors that the GPLv2 license is incompatible
 > > with the MIT/X11 license (in that MIT/X11 code cannot include GPLv2 code,
 > > even though GPLv2 can include MIT/X11). Some lawyers argue that including
 > > GPLv2 code in the MIT/X11 licensed X.Org tree would turn the whole X.Org
 > > project into a GPLv2 project (the situation is legally not very clear).
 > > For this reason, X.Org has opted to steer clear of this by insisting that
 > > all code distributed as part of X.Org is MIT/X11 licensed.
 > 
 > Well, based on Daniel Stone's latest e-mail clarifying the X.Org position,
 > time to rewrite that part completely. Here's a better alternative:
 > 
 > Tell the developers/contributors that X.Org policy is only to allow MIT/X11
 > licensed code, as X.Org's goal (as well as shipping a working X that others
 > can directly use) is to produce a Standard Implementation which others can
 > then build upon to make their own non-GPL (either another open/ free
 > license or proprietary) X - the GPL does not allow this.
 > 

It should be worded differently, your text makes people wonder what
we are up to here.
The real advantage of choosing the MIT License was that it helped to
proliferate the technology and make it not only a standard by somebody 
applying a rubber stamp but a standard by widespread use. This assured
interpoperability between graphcis workstations of different vendors.

Unfortunately the real proprietary approach was much more successful
in this respect :(  

Cheers,
	Egbert.



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