Re: problems installing xquartz
Re: problems installing xquartz
- Subject: Re: problems installing xquartz
- From: Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2012 09:44:20 -0800
On Dec 11, 2012, at 8:22 AM, James K. Lowden <email@hidden> wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:34:09 -0800
> Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia <email@hidden> wrote:
>
>>> X11 is open source software, so are all those license agreements
>>> really necessary?
>>
>> Yes, OSS has licenses.
>
> Yes, OSS has licenses, but not End User License Agreements.
On the contrary, the license does impact the end user.
> No open
> source license imposes restrictions on the *user*.
I think the difference may be that you may expect an EULA to *restrict* an end user, but that's certainly not always the case. "The MIT License states more explicitly the rights given to the **end-user** (emphasis added), including the right to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell the software." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License
> Last I checked, X11
> belongs to the Open Group and is governed by the MIT license.
X11 isn't *governed* by the MIT License. We are governed by our charter. We develop most of our software under the X11/MIT license and compatible licenses. Some older code from Sun are under other licenses; some of the Apple-only code is APSL; and there are other code licensed under compatible OSS licenses sprinkled throughout the X11 codebase.
> There is nothing
> for the user to agree to unless and until he becomes a distributor.
> And the terms of the license apply regardless of whether or not he
> clicked "I agree" when installing the software.
> A cynic might suggest that Apple wants its customers not to distinguish
> between free and non-free software, to think all software comes with
> strings attached, that those strings are inscrutable, and to just say
> Yes.
XQuartz is not Apple. Beyond XQuartz, many other open source projects place their licenses in the license field of the installer (or sometimes a menu item if installed by dragging to /Applications instead of Installer.app), including MacPorts, fink, VLC, GIMP, Wireshark, and LibreOffice. In fact, I couldn't find an example where this *wasn't* the case, so I think we're in good company =)
> But it might just be more convenient, administratively, for
> Apple to pour the x.org license into its installation mold. Put
> another way,
Well I can't really do much about cynics. I suppose that even a cynic can find problems with permissive licenses =).
If you have specific concerns, please raise them as we may be able to work around them. If your only concern is the number of clicks you need to make, then hopefully the installer command line tool will work for you. If you want to install this on many lab machines, you can script the installer command line tool or use Apple Remote Desktop.
--Jeremy
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