The Mesa distribution consists of several components. Different copyrights and licenses apply to different components. For example, GLUT is copyrighted by Mark Kilgard, some demo programs are copyrighted by SGI, some of the Mesa device drivers are copyrighted by their authors. See below for a list of Mesa's components and the copyright/license for each.
The core Mesa library is licensed according to the terms of the XFree86 copyright (an MIT-style license). This allows integration with the XFree86/DRI project. Unless otherwise stated, the Mesa source code and documentation is licensed as follows:
Copyright (C) 1999-2003 Brian Paul All Rights Reserved. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL BRIAN PAUL BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
When contributing to the Mesa project you must agree to relinquish your work to the holder of the copyright for the particular component you're contributing to. That is, you can't put your own copyright on the code, unless it's a modular piece that can be omitted from Mesa (like a new device driver). If for example, you contribute a bug fix to Mesa's texture mapping code, your code will become a part of the body of work which is copyrighted by Brian Paul and licensed by the above terms.
Mesa Component Licenses:
Component Files Primary Author License
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
core Mesa code src/*.[ch] Brian Paul Mesa
include/GL/gl.h
GLX driver src/X/* Brian Paul Mesa
include/GL/glx.h
include/GL/xmesa.h
OS/Mesa driver src/OSmesa/* Brian Paul Mesa
include/GL/osmesa.h
3Dfx driver src/FX/* David Bucciarelli Mesa
include/GL/fxmesa.h
BeOS R4 driver src/BeOS/* Brian Paul Mesa
MGL driver src/MGL/* SciTech, Inc SciTech copyright
include/GL/mglmesa.h
Windows driver src/Windows/* Li Wei copyright by Li Wei
include/GL/wmesa.h
SVGA driver src/SVGA/* Brian Paul GNU-LGPL
include/GL/svgamesa.h
DOS driver src/DOS/* Charlie Wallace GNU-LGPL
include/GL/dosmesa.h
GGI driver src/GGI/* Uwe Maurer GNU-LGPL
include/GL/ggimesa.h
S3 driver src/S3/* S3, Inc. S3 copyright
GLUT src-glut/* Mark Kilgard Mark's copyright
include/GL/*glut*.h
GLU library src-glu/* Brian Paul GNU-LGPL
SI GLU library si-glu/* SGI SGI Free B
include/GL/glu.h
Ext registry include/GL/glext.h SGI SGI Free B
include/GL/glxext.h
demo programs demos/* various see source files
X demos xdemos/* Brian Paul see source files
SGI demos samples/* SGI SGI copyright
RedBook demos book/* SGI SGI copyright