Slashdot Mirror
Mandrake Blocked By XFree86 4.4 License
Linzer writes "A mailing-list message posted by Mandrake Linux's main developer on the Cooker mailing-list states that the development version of the distro is about to revert from XFree86 4.4 to the 4.3 version because of XFree86's recent license change. Mandrake contributors have started asking for justifications from MdkSoft. Many point out features of XF86 4.4 [an 'an open source X11-based desktop infrastructure'] they can't live without, including support for some not so uncommon hardware.
A later Cooker mailing-list post extends a bit on the reasons."
Its nice to see the XFree86.org folks making the transition to the freedesktop.org smoother by making themselves irrelevent to users. Nice going guys!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Note: I don't actually speak for RMS, but I am reminded of his doctrine every time someone says "I need this non-free software". ;^)
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
Since everyone thought it was just dandy to package someone else's graphics system (XFree) with their Linux distribution, these is exactly the sort of consequences one should expect.
Build your own, if you want to be in control of its terms. If you bundle someone else's product with your product, that's a choice you make and a risk you take.
...to XFree86 but I don't see them making any new friends by doing this kind of thing. As soon as
alternatives are more mature, XFree86 will feel the heat.
And as for the Free in XFree86... Hmm..
But in the last several years it really just hasn't moved.
18 years ago the Mac // came out. We stole a vid card from one and put it in another. 4 seconds later, we had 2 screens showing one continuous desktop. Windows and X Windows finally now can do that if you kill a chicken at the full moon.
The X Consortium kept X down for critical years - backing off from coming close to dictating look at feel. As a result, doing things like Exiting an App was a Tower of Babel proposition (frame != lotus != xv != wordperfect != anything else).
Gnome and KDE was developed by folks used to Windows and Mac as kids who demanded a style guide. Too late?
X11R6/Broadway was released and, as far as I can discern, mostly development has stopped. Sure we have drivers to take advantage of cards and 3D engines and such, but it's pretty well unchanged from 1994.
Where is my easy Log Back in and have it give me my desktop I left back (start up the apps I had with cursors in the places I had them)?
Where is my ability to snapshot and env, give up the machine, move to another and restart it?
What's moved FORWARD except drivers in the last couple years?
Why do we care about .. releases.
License?
I have faith that it will be worked out with everyone happy. This reminds me too much of the IPF flameup over a license in a beta of darren's code. It caused PF to be written, but that was mostly schoolyard maturity at work on that one.
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
http://archives.mandrakelinux.com/cooker/2004-02/
Moderators, keep an eye open!
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Actually, in case you hadn't noticed, these are the Glory Days of X, man. I don't consider that era when you had to worry about 8 bit color palette collisions to be anything like a time of glory. TrueColor displays, KDE, Gnome, XRender, Xft.. these are some of the ingredients of a glorious new age for X. Happily, Keith and Jim are still involved.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
There is a no advertising without written permission clause.
/usr/share/doc/XFree86 or whatever you'd be in compliance.
I don't get that out of the license at all. What I read is that you can't use the name "The XFree86 Project, Inc." in any advertising -- why is that a big deal?
I also don't see the problems with the rest of the license points highlighted in the mailing list exchange. Looks like if you put their copyright notice in
Now the generation of yet another licensing scheme for open source software does confuse things unnecessarily, but I don't see any concrete problems with the license....
IMHO it's the BSDish license that will eventually lead to such a bizzare tangle of required credits, attributions, acknowledgements, etc that it'll be very hard to keep track of them all.
I'm glad I use the *GPL's. Pretty much avoid mess's like this altogether too.
People are saying this license change is "incompatible" with the GPL... however under the wording of the change it is still acceptable for individual files to be copyrighted, and included in the XFree86 base as licensed under the GPL. You're really RMSing if you are going to noodle about having to include an extra copyright notice in your documentation.
This has little to do with anything other than the fact that Mandrake team realizes it's not a valuble use of their time to go through adding all these new copyright notices when you're in RC1 state. Not sure how it compares with rolling back to 4.3 in terms of actual labor, but obviously the CBA came out on the side of rollback.
The biggest joke here is that people are crying about losing the features of 4.4, in a distribution that doesn't do anything to stop you from DOWNLOADING AND INSTALLING THE BLEEDING EDGE FROM SOURCE whenever you feel like it. for crying out loud, people. DIY!
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
so you want them to list 1000 plus people on the box? and the ads? and the site? Cost prohibitive.
Why can't they just post a link to the XFree86 website? the people who care will go there, those that don't care won't have to wade through a bunch of names they don't care about.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I dont see whats the big deal, issues like this can create new tech, and spark new creative ideas in the community.
I am so glad that I use the *BSD's. Pretty much avoid mess's like this altogether.
,etc....
Except the new X licensed would seem to me to make linking X librarys into GPL'd code a violation of the GPL, as well as adding the onus of the advertising clause to EVERY SINGLE PROGRAM that uses the X libraries.
If you're fine with loosing all of the GPL'd apps that you run on your *BSD box, then enjoy your Xwindows with no modern window manager, no GNOME or KDE, no QT or GTK apps, etc
Please send all UCE to scally@devolution.com so I can f
Rubbish. It's very clear that isn't the case - applications (or, for that matter, libraries) that run on top of X but do not require a particular flavour of X to work are not considered derivative works. If they were, you couldn't run GPLed programs on any proprietary X server including MacOS, various commercial UNIXes, the commercial X servers that are available for Linux, etc. etc.
You could conceivably argue that a program was derivative if it required a feature present in XFree and only in XFree, but (certainly OTOH) I can't think of any such programs.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
I don't think so...QT and GTK are not derived works of XFree86 by any test you put them under.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
I'm not sure if this is just a publicity stunt, or what, but you can bet even if Mandrake refuses to ever update XFree86 again (which would be REAL healthy for them, since there's no alternative on the immediate horizon), that plenty of distributions with common sense WILL. Personally, I do not find the new XFree86 license to be unreasonable, or incompatible with the GPL. And is the FSF or some other organization going to sue a Linux distributor over shipping XFree86? They'd have to be on crack to want a test case for the GPL like that.
My advice: go ahead and ship it, remembering the old Grace Hopper quote. You won't benefit by watching your user base defect.
to put "has XFree86 4.4" on a box
So now you see that RMS was only ahead of his time asking for GNU to be added to Linux. Luckily for him, he only asked, rather than putting it on the license, so he just got ignored rather than having all FSF projects forked like XFree is going to be.
Well I guess this is the first step at digging Xfree86's grave, isn't it? Distros will stop shipping it, people will stop using it, what's left of the developers at xfree86.org will lose interest in developing it and the whole project will head towards a slow death.
It's a bit early to draw conclusions but if all the distros will drop it one by one, it's just what will happen. I'll theink we'll be better off with the alternatives (Xouvert & the X server at freedesktop.org) anyway.
And I should care because...?
I understand that this is not convenient for you, but companies take compliance with licenses seriously. Copyright infringement has very serious penalties these days, including $150K per violation. For a distributor that could easily run into the hundreds of millions. Not to mention criminal penalties.
It's like saying that downloading unlicensed MP3s is easy for you so you don't understand why Napster stopped doing it and you will no longer be using their service.
Quit whining about the XF86 people having a restrictive and self-damning license when you haven't read it!
By comparison, the GPL is much more restrictive than the new XF86 license.
Irregardless of the fact that The X Consortium and XFree86 are different groups (I don't know how many people from one are involved in the other, or what influence each group has on the other), the whole "trap" is a farse as far as I can tell. So they planned to make new releases non-free -- does that wipe the old (free) releases from the face of the planet? If not, then how exactly is it a trap? Or was RMS just using rhetoric meant to play on peoples' fears?
Oh but wait. I thought *BSD was a "real" OS and that everything was designed from the ground up to work together? But now your telling me that almost eveything that *BSD relies on to provide a modern desktop environment is really GPL? Hmmm. Well at least they invented Apache, Squid, Samba, and MySQL. Oh they didn't? Well at least that leaves them a console. I guess that's useful for something if at least the knowledge that the console is BSD POWERED! Because remember, that's the important thing.
I'm not going to run it. Everyone who writes software has a right to decide on their own licence, but everyone also has a right to choose not to use it.
Read the manifesto... it's a roadmap for software communism.
Aye, comrade! Tis better to be a Communist than a pirate or a slave to proprietary software.
Imagine I had an OS program that required you to list 1,000 contributors each time it was run, divided by group, sorted alphabetically, blah blah blah. Now you're required to fill a user's screen with 1,000 names they'll never read, and you are unable to get around this requirement, short of writing your own program from scratch. What a waste of previously good OS code.
Imagine that you had actually taken the time to read the revised license for yourself rather than rely on others. Here then for the incredibly lazy are points 2 and 3 of the revised license:
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, and in the same place and form as other copyright, license and disclaimer information.
3. The end-user documentation included with the redistribution, if any, must include the following acknowledgment: "This product includes software developed by The XFree86 Project, Inc (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors", in the same place and form as other third-party acknowledgments. Alternately, this acknowledgment may appear in the software itself, in the same form and location as other such third-party acknowledgments.
Nowhere in those statements are you required to post a damn thing on the screen as part of the binary. Note the repeated use of the words "documentation" as the basis for satisfying the conditions of the license. Give credit for using their code or don't use (steal?) their source to make your own app. These are the conditions for use. Disagree, fine. But don't distort the truth to make your argument sound better.
I'm still waiting for someone to provide a reasoned explanation for all this chest beating and general blather. As per usual, there's far to many instances of I-can't-be-bothered-to-RTFM and "the sky is falling".
This (AC parent post) is exactly what I have been hoping to hear! I'd been looking to see what Branden would say about all this, as he not only does an excellent job overseeing X on Debian but he is also, imho, the main commentator for Debian on licenses.
I like the DFSG guidelines. I think they are the best interpretation out there of what you can really take as Free and what you can't. If XFree86 4.4 was not going to be DFSG-free, I would have felt sure we would have seen a Debian fork if no-one else stepped up. But what I really hoped to see was a collaboration between freedesktop, xouvert and debian to oversee a fork of X, but I had no idea if the desire would be there from the core of freedesktop and xouvert to be DFSG-free.
It's not a simple task, and it will mean compromises (s3-texture compression perhaps) but I think that the key for a free X is for it to have an out in an open development environment and to allow more seperation of the server from the system (so hardware development is easier and quicker, even use of non-free servers (nvidia and ati for example) would probably become easier if the full range of interests in X got involved). I feel this is make or break for XFree86, in the next month they will either back down and open up somehow, or else they will see themselves forked out of existence. I actually favour the latter and I already think it has started, if XFree86 don't change their tune very soon, how long will it be before Debian, Mandrake and Fedora all have freedesktop packages as the next (post 4.3) version of X? Even if they are a bit of a hairy option, like a 2.6 kernel could be now.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
You raise an excellent point, but we have to remember that any new implementation of X11 is going to have to allow all the existing drivers to work with it. Otherwise we face a lot of things like this: "Uh, hello, NVidia? Remember how we whined to you to make drivers for XFree86? Well forget that, now we need you to do it all over again for this new implementation."
Yes, in the perfect world, all graphic card specs would be open and anyone could write a driver for them. But it is not likely going to happen anytime soon, and to abandon all the work that companies who have not opened the specs but have graciously chosen to give us drivers is throwing the baby out with the bathwater (and I'm not implying that you're saying this, but it is something that might follow from an attempt to rewrite everything from scratch).
I am aware that this attitude flies in the face of free software purists. Much as I respect RMS and his position, I prefer to meet somewhere in the middle.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
Noone else is demanding recognition for their work. They're a part of the global community and have accepted the terms. It all works nicely.
But that's not what stuns me the most about your post. It's your way of thinking - HOW, i say, HOW on earth could X be more important than Linux to Linux? There is a reason that Mandrake is Linux, not just because IT IS BASED on the Linux kernel in the way it works as of today, but also because this is the way one use and contribute to the GPL community. And it's named Mandrake Linux. That's why it's sold, downloaded and used. Jesus.
In the end, X is nothing without what's on top. Which is a lot of GPL. If GPL distributors refuse to use XFree4.4, but only distribute GPL compatible software, someone would have to create everything BUT X. With X licensing. Great.
There always seem to be people on Slashdot who ask why so much work is "wasted" on two projects to solve the same problem. The most notable example is KDE vs. Gnome. Well, I think this is a perfect example of why that's a great thing. The XFree guys haven't had serious competition in years and now we're all begging for the freedesktop.org guys to come to the rescue. All of the "wasted" effort does have a purpose, it keeps people from trying these kinds of shenanigans.
"I think the U.N. is going to find that the blame lies with all the Sudanese rap music that glamorizes genocide."
Why bother forking 4.3.x, when you can fork 4.4.0 RC2?
From xfree86.org (emphasis added): "The XFree86 Project, Inc is announcing that it has made a change to its license effective with the Third Release Candidate for the 4.4.0 series."
Did somebody say loophole?
Many XFree86 developers work very hard to bring us a great window system. I've used XFree86 for quite a while, and it continues to improve. I don't see what the big deal is about giving the developers credit. libjpeg has a similar clause, but I find that most applications don't honor it. I guess we need to rewrite libjpeg for the stupid GNU zealots.
From the libjpeg README:
"In plain English:
1. We don't promise that this software works. (But if you find any bugs, please let us know!)
2. You can use this software for whatever you want. You don't have to pay us.
3. You may not pretend that you wrote this software. If you use it in a program, you must acknowledge somewhere in your documentation that you've used the IJG code."
Because you can never make a license that says "no additional restrictions allowed except when they are harmless". And if you do allow additional restrictions where does that leave the "Free" in "Free Software"? The GPL is very specific in that respect: you are not allowed to pose additional restrictions on the license and that is all done so you, as a user of Free Software, can be 100% sure that the software is and will always remain Free.
to create a GPL alternative to XFree86.
If you want something done right you got to do it yourself.
You may not like the GPL and the fact that it has such restrictions. Fair enough. But there it is, and there's a whole pile of code willfully distributed under precisely those terms. I'm afraid you can't rewind the clock and relicence ot all under a different licence that's more to your liking.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
What were these guys thinking when they resurrected an advertising clause?
Hey, let's not just shoot ourselves in the foot, but do it just when desktop Linux is taking off?
Yeah, that's what we needed, a licensing dispute when we're trying to develop more user-friendly desktop environments.
Pity the alternatives aren't further along. On the other hand, maybe actions like this, basically boycotting 4.4, will get them to revert back to the old license, or at least get rid of the advertising clause.
"Uh, hello, NVidia? Remember how we whined to you to make drivers for XFree86? Well forget that, now we need you to do it all over again for this new implementation."
"Hello, Nvidia? Would you like to continue to sell graphics cards to the growing numbers of people who use Linux?" If the answer is no, there are other manufacturers who will take up the slack. It's the nature of a truly competetive marketplace.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Everyones's already pissed at them, and now there are several apparently viable competitors, a concept likely foreign to them.
The same things the exile your strongest developers created this lisence issue, and will eventually kill XFree86 as a viable entity.
(IMHO,YMMV,OITMAFTTA)
1. XFree86 4.3 works just fine, so most people will continue to use that for as long as it takes to come up with a suitable alternative.
2. Many people are working on suitable alternatives; this annoyance might inspire them, invigorate them, or, more likely, piss them off. Any of the three would speed their efforts. This is a Good Thing.
3. Having something new, something cleaner, something fresh and interesting would be really cool, anyway. So it's not like discarding XFree86 is going to hurt us.
4. If the X guys wanna shoot themselves in the head, shouldn't we support them in that? You don't want to crush their dreams, do you? Perhaps they want to be revered like Kurt Cobain, and have a candlelight vigil in their name or something. C'mon, let 'em be happy! Everyone go back to X 4.3 and light a candle in memory of the Geeks That Time Forgot.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
The secret to growing big, huge, gigantic, beautiful, delicious, colorful vegetables is the soil. It's ALL in the soil. Soil is alive. Something like 3 billion micro-organisms in a teaspoon of it. Unfortunately, much of the soil in use today on our modern factory farms is "dead". Pesticides, high-nitrogen fertilizers, and monoculture (growing the same crop in the same spot year after year after year after year) "kill" the soil. It's the microorganisms in the soil that actually do the dying, the various types of earthworms, and other living organisms in the soil - they die - the chemicals kill them. Anyone who brews beer will understand that when something powerful is going on (yeast) that sucks up the nutritional value, bad things like molds don't have any food to grow. Same theory - with healthy soil, you get healthy veggies, and you don't need pesticides because healthier plants tend to not get pests.
The reason that open-source software and people collaborating is so effective is because all those countless volunteers who spend their time working on the code, contributing to it, making it better - they are like the earthworms; they are like the microorganisms in the soil, that do the growing of the software.
It's an amazing analogy. You can buy nutrition and security for your plants - fertilizers, pesticides, genetically engineered seeds. Or you can use what nature has provided and "grow soil". All you need to do is "grow soil", and you will have yields that will boggle your mind. The veggies will be bigger, they will have less disease, they will need less water (although this has to do with planting diagrams and keeping the soil in the shade with plants planted closer together, not in rows, more like you would find plants in nature, more random, not in rows. Many people tend to not think of "soil" as something that is "alive", but what we call soil IS alive, actually - as long as you don't dump chemicals on it.
In any case, you get the idea. If you want good veggies, you focus on the soil. You can "buy" soil nutrition via fertilizers, but it's not as good, and it's more expensive. So it would logically follow then, that in order to "grow" dynamic, excellent software, what you actually need to do is to "grow" the developer community. Good software results from growing a "community", a community of developers. Respect is good, but it can't code. Acknowlegement is fine, but a living, breathing, thinking, developer is much better. Actually, make that plural - living, breathing, thinking developerS are even better!
This is obviously killing the community - that's what it's doing, so it's really sad, in a way - that the X people don't understand why open source and community-based projects like Linux do so well - it's the "soil". A project will die if it's license doesn't encourage vast numbers of developers to get involved. That's why proprietary software tends to not be as advanced as open source projects that encourage participation from qualified volunteers. If you don't encourage participation from qualified volunteers, your project will slowly fade away and be replaced by a project that has an active and dynamic developer pool.
This is utter bullshit. The GPL has absolutely no end-use restrictions. It has restrictions on the use of copyrighted source code, but it explicitly places no restrictions on the use of the binaries thus produced.
Those people from XFree got fed up with the X server not being noticed by anyone. Linux this, linux that, you know, the SCO stuff giving Linux publicity, but nobody says anything about X. Not a word. And they got fed up with this. Like RMS who always was crying loud: NOT LINUX, GNU/Linux. Because Linux is not Linux. It is at least GNU/Linux/XFree/BSD-stuff/something-else.
You can defy gravity... for a short time
With all due respect, you hack on whatever you want. But don't you think it would be better to work on a more current video chipset (ie one that is still being manufactured) ? There must a ton of Voodoo 2 card out there, but they are slowly falling out of use. IMHO, your precious hacking time would be better spent on (for example) reverse enginnering the GF2 or GF4 to get some level of Open-Source support for this very common chipset. Or improving the Open-Source Radeon 8500 driver.
Do get me wrong; I know in the end, you owe me nothing and are totally free to work on whatever suit your fancy. I'm just looking for the best investment possible for my 0.02$.
:wq