Xorg Now GPL??

[Paulo Cesar Pereira de Andrade]

Adam Jackson wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-08-27 at 15:59 +0100, Bill Crawford wrote:
>>> Yes, but the people who can't accept it generally aren't the ones contributing, AFAICS.
>> You might want to look at the list of corporate contributors to the X
>> server codebase over the years ...
>
> With my red hat on: Changing the license of the server to some version
> of GPL would make some things better and some things worse.  We'd have
> more libraries we'd be allowed to consume, so could potentially spend
> less time reinventing wheels; on the downside, we could lose a
> significant number of external contributors, which is not something the
> project can really afford since we're wildly understaffed as it is, and
> it would invite even more armchair lawyering.
>
> Given that it would solve no problems we're currently experiencing, and
> would introduce new ones, we don't see any point in relicensing.

  It would most likely cause some (hopefully) short term problems. But
in the long run, it would be better and should attract more contributors.
Also, a fork probably would be positive, as people usually work better
when there is "an opposite side"; someone they want to prove they are
better (sorry can't express very well in english but I think I exposed
the idea).

  It would require rewriting a lot of code also, to become fully GPL,
but at start would be just accepting GPL code.

  But a strong leader, someone like a Linus for X is still to appear.
Until that person is found, any attempts are most likely going to fail.

  My 2 cents.

> - ajax

Paulo