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."

Comments

I don't understand

[garompa]

What exactly has changed in the 4.4 release?

License change is perfectly reasonable

[Gleenie]

Nothing to see here - I believe Mandrake are brewing a storm in a teacup. The crux of the license change is that if you redistribute source or binary code, then you must also distribute a notice (along with any other third party notices) that says some of your product was written by the XFree86 team.

What's wrong with that? You are still allowed to modify and redistribute the code to your heart's content, as long as you acknowledge the original authors. Wouldn't you want your work acknowledged?

Re:Enter the GNU

[Andreas(R)]

And what would RMS say?

He would surely say this.

Re:Windows has this too

[be-fan]

Freedesktop.org is working to put this in. They already have a fully-compositing X that you can download right now. Window movement is pretty good (especially impressive given that its unaccelerated!), but resize is really slow because of very unoptimized code. When it gets its new acceleration architecture, everything should be a lot faster.