Xorg Now GPL??

[vehemens]

On Wednesday 27 August 2008 02:13:43 pm Dave Airlie wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 6:17 AM, Marc Balmer <marc at msys.ch> wrote:
> > * 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.
>
> Yes that would happen, X would just suddenly stop if it was relicense,
> you might look
> at the major contributors to X.org at the moment and who funds them,
>
> apart from Alan at Sun and Matthieu from OpenBSD, nearly everyone else
> that contributes to core X
> comes from a Linux company or Linux supporting company (ignoring Apple
> for now as they mainly do non-core work).
>
> We'd probably also alienate Nvidia.
>
> I'm not saying switching to GPL would ever be a good thing, I am
> saying you are over estimating the importance of your opinion.

Last time I checked, a Linux company expects to make a profit.  Two of the 
companies mentioned sell hardware as well.

If switching to GPL was to happen, I would probably have to use it, but I 
would never spend money on it.

After all, it's free software isn't it?