From: Hartmut Niemann <niemann@cip.e-technik.uni-erlangen.de>
  To  : ggi Mailingliste <ggi-develop@eskimo.com>
  Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 09:41:35 +0200 (MESZ)

License issues

Hi everybody!

Put on your fireproof vests, make your fire extinguishers ready,
get some ammunition, the next flame war is coming.

Not really. Only if you want to. You shouldn't.

The license discussion is not over yet.

We should solve it by end of the month, and have a 'final' license 
in the 1st-August stable.

Last thing I remember was, that a mixed-mode approach was thought best,
with all os-dependent parts with a license that fit the OS, and for the
independent parts something in between the BSD style and the LGPL.
Andy, would you please post your latest draft?

If you saw the flamewar on linux-kernel about Gimp versus KDE about
GPL style licensing, you see how much ammunition there still is.
It took roughly  one third of the linux-kernel messages for a couple
of days ...

We need to sort out what license we want to work under. Really soon now.

And then each and every of us must decide for himself, whether he likes
this license. If not, there will be two choices.
- leave the project group and leave your code as a donation to the project.
- leave the project and take your code with you. 
This should be done by July 25th, so that the code can be removed before
August 1st.

There are GPL fans in our team, and BSD fans, and some in between (and some
probably won't care). It would be a pity if we could not find common ground
to work on, and if this would become a split or the death of this
challenging project. But if so, then rather now than next month.

>From August 1st on we must have one license for our project.
We can't go without it any longer.

Ring frei!

Hartmut.
-----------------------8<----------------------------
For the case we can not settle this by 1st of august, I propose this

PRELIMINARY LICENSE
1) This software comes without warranty of any kind. It is alpha 
   software and not guaranteed to do anything.
2) This software is for your personal evaluation ONLY. You may not
   redistribute it now. You may not use it yet for any commercial
   purpose.
3) This license will become invalid when the final LICENSE is decided
   on. But then you'll want to get a new version of this software
   anyway.

to be included as /degas/LICENSE.