Free Software Foundation and Khronos Group Both Herald New License of Industry Standard Graphics Software
SUNNYVALE, Calif. (Sept. 19, 2008)  As software developers the world over prepare to mark the 25th anniversary of the GNU System, Silicon Graphics, Inc. (NASDAQ: SGIC) today announced it is releasing a new version of the SGI Free Software License B. The license, which now mirrors the free X11 license used by X.Org, further opens previously released SGI® graphics software that has set the industry standard for visualization software and has proven essential to GNU/Linux® and a host of applications.
Support from Free and Open Source community:
- "We couldn't be happier with this decision, and we're very grateful to SGI for all their assistance," said Peter Brown, executive director, Free Software Foundation (FSF). "The FSF is committed to ensuring that everyone's computing tasks can be done with free software and this SGI code plays an important role in scientific and design applications and in the latest desktop environments and games." (Welcome! - Free Software Foundation)
- "Khronos applauds this move by SGI to adopt a new licensing model that will benefit the entire OpenGL community," said Neil Trevett,president of The Khronos Group, a member-funded industry consortium creating and evolving open standard APIs  including OpenGL. "It takes truly open standards to enable the authoring and playback of rich media on a wide variety of platforms and devices, and today's announcement shows real support for developers who rely on OpenGL, the planet's most widely deployed 2D and 3D graphics API." (The Khronos Group: Open Standards, Royalty Free, Dynamic Media Technologies)
More Info : SGI - Press Releases: SGI Further Opens Its OpenGL Contributions | Linux.com :: SGI relicenses OpenGL: "A huge gift to the free software community"
