Under a more restrictive licence, the XFree86 project has finally released the long-awaited XFree86 4.4.0-RELEASE. Well, this is really a big news, however, the licence (Yes you guys may say that it is very similiar to the BSD Licence with four clause, however it is not, and more importantly, this is more like the ancient four clause one, which was replaced by a new three-caluse one, and most BSDers will prefer a two clause one like the following:

(obtained from FreeBSD’s src/share/examples/etc/bsd-style-copyright)

/*-
* Copyright (c) [year] [your name]
* All rights reserved.
*
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
* modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
* are met:
* 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
* documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
*
* THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS’’ AND
* ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
* IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
* ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
* FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
* DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
* OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
* HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
* LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
* OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
* SUCH DAMAGE.
*
* [id for your version control system, if any]
*/

Personally I am not really care about the XFree86’s licence change. It just added an “You have to credit me” claim, yes, compared to modern BSD Licence, it’s more restrictive, however, it’s more acceptable than the GPL’s restriction. I really really dislike GPL, despite the due respect to Richard M. Stallman :-(