Inclusion of MXit plugin into Pidgin

[Mark Doliner]

On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 6:37 AM, Ethan Blanton<elb at pidgin.im> wrote:
> Francois Botha spake unto us the following wisdom:
>> To me, advertising is against the spirit of Pidgin, but that's a touch feely
>> thing I can't substantiate.  MXit make millions off their mobile advertising
>> anyway.
>>
>> To clear up some legal issues, am I allowed to take MXit's source, remove
>> the advertising, repackage the plugin (for Windows and other operating
>> systems) and host it on my own site? Of course I'll provide the modified
>> source as well.  Or do I have to look at MXit's license for the answer?
>
> If you are not, then the MXit plugin is license-incompatible with
> Pidgin, and they must either relicense it immediately or cease
> distribution entirely.

An additional point to consider... it may be possible for the MXit
servers to have a terms of service that requires the user to connect
using a client that displays ads.  My opinion is that this would be
allowed by the GPL, but I think most of us agree that this is against
the spirit of the license.  This is very similar to the situation with
the Skype PRPL.

-Mark