From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Sven Luther Subject: Re: Re: [forum] Re: Announcement: Modification to the base XFree86(TM) license. Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 17:04:09 +0100 Sender: linux-fbdev-devel-admin@lists.sourceforge.net Message-ID: <20040202160409.GA19045@iliana> References: <20040131113753.GA19133@iliana> <20040202114141.GA15340@iliana> <401E4D09.6070506@msu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Return-path: Received: from sc8-sf-mx2-b.sourceforge.net ([10.3.1.12] helo=sc8-sf-mx2.sourceforge.net) by sc8-sf-list1.sourceforge.net with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1AngZF-0005iX-MM for linux-fbdev-devel@lists.sourceforge.net; Mon, 02 Feb 2004 08:04:57 -0800 Received: from smtp6.wanadoo.fr ([193.252.22.25] helo=mwinf0604.wanadoo.fr) by sc8-sf-mx2.sourceforge.net with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1AngZB-0006zS-OT for linux-fbdev-devel@lists.sourceforge.net; Mon, 02 Feb 2004 08:04:53 -0800 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <401E4D09.6070506@msu.edu> Errors-To: linux-fbdev-devel-admin@lists.sourceforge.net List-Unsubscribe: , List-Id: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , List-Archive: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: forum@xfree86.org Cc: devel@xfree86.org, linux-fbdev-devel@lists.sourceforge.net On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 08:13:45AM -0500, Harold L Hunt II wrote: > Sven Luther wrote: > > >On Sat, Jan 31, 2004 at 01:06:23PM +0000, Andrew C Aitchison wrote: > > > >>On Sat, 31 Jan 2004, Sven Luther wrote: > >> > >> > >>>On Sat, Jan 31, 2004 at 09:10:22AM +0000, Andrew C Aitchison wrote: > >>> > >>>>For several years the mga fb kernel driver has supported dual head > >>>>and/or > >>>>dvi on cards which aren't supported by the XFree86 driver (unless you > >>>>use the mga_hal). I've wanted to use kernel code to add this support to > >>>>XFree86, but been put off by the licence problem. > >>> > >>>And, have you asked the mgafb driver author about this ? > >>> > >>>You can hardly complain about lack of back traffic if you didn't ask him > >>>about it, and if you did, it would be interesting to this discussion to > >>>know what the problems where. > >> > >>"The Author" ? > >>This is open source code; there may be 27 authors of the relevant file. > >>In XFree86 code I wouldn't know how to find the author of a file without > >>looking at that file. My {limited ,mis}understanding of clean room coding > >>makes me wary of reading any source unless I know that its licence will > >>allow me to do what I wish. > > > > > >This is not acceptable. You are making wild accusations, and didn't even > >try to contact the relevant people. To my knowledge, Petr is the sole > >author of matroxfb, and there should not have been any problem in at > >least asking him about this. > > Wild accusations? How do you get wild accusations from pointing out > that there "may be 27 authors of the relevant file"? If anyone is > making wild accusations, it is you. Andrew simply stated the point that Ok, sorry, shouldn't have said it so, maybe it was a bit exagerated. Still this is degenerating in GPL bashing, which will bring us nowhere. And if you didn't make the effort to ask at least once, where will we go. I am sure that a post to the linux-fbdev mailing list would have solved everything, or maybe the main maintainer of the matroxfb driver ? > this is not an issue about proving whether *one* file doesn't have > issues; rather, it is the issue of having to prove that *all* files do > not have issues, and many of these files may be just as messy in > authorship as Andrew is suggesting. Still, there is a mailing list where all linux fbdev authors are, or at least most of them, and bitkeeper will mostly give us full history, so i doubt it is as bad as you say. Also, most fbdev authors have also been XFree86 contributors in the past, so i don't really know what the problem is here. Friendly, Sven Luther ------------------------------------------------------- The SF.Net email is sponsored by EclipseCon 2004 Premiere Conference on Open Tools Development and Integration See the breadth of Eclipse activity. February 3-5 in Anaheim, CA. http://www.eclipsecon.org/osdn