Xorg Now GPL??

[Marc Balmer]

* Paulo Cesar Pereira de Andrade wrote:
> 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.

becoming fully GPL would be the end X.  The GPL is not a free license.

> 
>   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
> 
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