Re: [Devel] Re: Bitmap font file reading progress

[David Turner]

Hi Francesco,

Francesco Zappa Nardelli a écrit :
> 
> Dear Werner,
> 
> FZ> I am going to put my (forthcoming) contributed code under the X
> FZ> licence.  The X license is more permissive than either the GPL or
> FZ> the FreeType licence, and I suppose this won't create any problem.
> FZ> Let me know otherwise.
> 
> WL> Please offer two alternative licenses, GPL and X, to avoid license
> WL> compatibility problems.
> 
> Er...  The X licence is strictly more liberal than the GPL.  While I
> am not a lawyer, I do know that there can be no compatibility problems
> with the X licence.
> 
> If you know otherwise, please do tell me so.
> 
OK, here are the gory details:

  the FreeType license is a BSD derivated where we removed the
  infamous "advertising clause". However, we require that the
  _documentation_ of products using the library include a line
  like "Portions Copyright The FreeType Project" in their
  documentation.

  This is incompatible with the GPL, which considers this to
  be an unacceptable restriction.. And I'm not kidding..

  The X11 license is also a BSD derivative, but doesn't include
  a "documentation quote" clause, which is why it is compatible
  with the GPL.

  Personally, I prefer to release the library under a dual license
  rather than make it X11-style licensed.

  If your code is released under an X11 license, it can be used
  directly by FreeType. Otherwise, you'll need a dual license too.

  We could also consider an alternative license for FreeType as
  well ( X11, LGPL, etc.. ?? ), but this needs to be discussed
  on this list before..

Cheers,

- David