[vox-tech] [OT] The AFPL (was: some PDF problems: screen and print rendering do not match)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Peter Jay Salzman (p at dirac.org):

> I think this is a really, really nice way of putting it.  But it also
> makes you wonder how David Dawes would chime in on this converation.  I
> just saw this today.  It's very sad:
> 
>    http://xfree86.org/distros/

Just to draw an important distinction:  The problem with Dawes's
advertising-clause licences was not its inclusion per se.  There's
nothing wrong with 4-clause BSD licences or analogues thereof.
The problems were:

1.  He wrote his one-off licence very badly.  (This is, relatively, a
minor problem, but I thought I'd mention it.)  I've read it, and he
really messed up the wording.  If he'd wanted to use a non-copyleft
licence with advertising clause, why didn't he borrow the existing,
competently written one?  This hints at the other problems:

2.  It was gratuitously inserted into the XFree86 codebase without
discussion and behind most people's backs.

3.  It was unexpected, and broke licence compatibility with third-party
codebases that many, many people had been relying on.

In addition, the sheer lack of leadership in springing these issues on
the entire XFree86 community in that fashion brought to a head existing 
fractures between developers, which had been brewing ever since about
the time Keith Packard left.  So, to borrow the old phrase, the
community classified Dawes (and XFree86.org) as damage, and routed
around them.

> In a few short months, David Dawes turned xfree86 into a ghostland.

Quite.

The disruption was pretty short, though:  There was such unanimity about 
the exodus that everyone pretty much just marched over to new digs at
freedesktop.org / x.org, dusted off their desks, and resumed work.

Two and 3/4 cheers for the right to fork!