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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
As far as I can tell, all Mandrake would need to do is include the new text in with the rest of the copyright/liscense info and they'd be in compliance? Why is this a big deal? Or is there some subtle legal thing at work?
It appears to my uneducated eye that this is a very slight modification which shouldn't make any difference to mandrake beyond the typical publication of copyright notices.
If Mandrake takes it seriously enough to revert to 4.3 I must be wrong? Anyone have an explanation?
Yes, I know, XFree was, and still is, THE X11 free implementation for a Linux graphical subsystem. YES, it is by far one of the most advanced overall. But NO, there is NOT only this one.
This implementation is the one we've been using for Linux Ages. But since recently, they have failed to deliver a greater-than-the-previous product: no extraordinary boosts, no rewrite of the starting system, etc... It's beginning to grow too old - we can see that by the starting greed of the project over its programmers.
What we need is a new subsystem, like Xouvert or freedesktop.org's X Server implementation.
This is my opinion. Everyone has a right to my opinion.
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.
Wouldn't a good solution to be what Mozilla did to ensure GPL compatibility? Cross-license XF86 under its own liberal license, the GPL, and the LGPL. This way, companies like mandrake could easily use it under an "approved" license, hassle free. -- What to keep away from dogs
Laymans terms, probably misunderstood:
They have an incredible mishmash of licenses between each source file, as each file can contain a message stating what license it is released under.
Theyve just created another which encompasses the binary distribution.
The whole binary distribution.
Except the portions which had seperate licenses as specified by the source code.
But to check which those bits are, you would have to check each source file, and know what it does.
So I guess Mandrake have decided, probably in these exact words "F*CK THAT!"
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
...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.
You can read his analysis on a thread on debian-legal.
There's also been extensive discussion of the new license on debian-legal. The discussion carries over from Jan into February too.
But how is this license change is big problem?
#Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions, and the following disclaimer.
# 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.
# 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.
From the looks of the problematic clauses, it seems that all that needs to be changed is some documentation.
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
Debian is expected to run into this problem in 2038. Way to go Branden.
Can someone explain why Mandrake is the only distro blocked now?
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
The short version: the GPL is "incompatible" with licenses that require you to include extra text and restrict all other advertising. Thus, you cannot legally include both GPL'ed code and New XFree86 licensed code in the same program.
Trustworthy sources tell me that Red Hat, SuSE, and Debian are reacting similarly. The license change was announced as a fait accompli, and after being urged to reconsider, David Dawes went ahead with it any way.
This might be the sort of thing the freedesktop.org people are talking about when they say XFree86 (the project) doesn't have any accountability to the community. They seem to have a problem working cooperatively with others.
Freedesktop.org not only has a couple of big-name figures from the glory days of X involved (Jim Gettys and Keith Packard), but they also have actively involved various third parties and stakeholders in the X Window System technology -- not just the Linux distributions, but leading developers in GNOME, KDE, and Mozilla to name just a few, and some other people who were kicked out of the XFree86 project.
XFree86 does not seem to have been able to make the transition from the small hobbyist audience that it served in 1993. Maybe David Dawes and the few remaining participants in XFree86 will be happier producing a custom version of the X Window System for themselves and a tiny minority of others. Maybe they didn't lack the skills to be a large community project: just the motivation.
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
Which also means: you can't use KDE or GPL'd Qt on XFree86 4.4. This is a fairly big deal for Mandrake.
Finding God in a Dog
I think Stallman would remind he foresaw this situation many years ago:
The X Windows Trap
If people like you weren't so busy misrepresenting his views you'd see that.
an ill wind that blows no good
(IANAL or a licencing expert, so please correct me if I'm wrong.) I believe the problem is that this is a restriction being placed on the code, and the GPL doesn't allow any additional restrictions (however harmless they may seem) to be added. Hence, an incompatibility between that licence and the GPL.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
It's *written* consent from all authors. It's just like the old BSD license when it had the advertising license where you had to list all contributors of a project if you advertised the software. Meaning if you had 1000 developers for a project that would easily fill an entire page in a magazine. Making the 20k dollars you just spent on a magazine ad a big list of names no one cares about. XFree86 has done this now too and made it a little bit worse too.
75% of all statistics are made up!
I find this paragraph specially interesting:
If you notice the defensive post by Alan Cox that he's asking them not to
change the license on his contributions, there's something wrong with it in
the sense that it doesn't appear as "free" software anymore (free as in
libre). (Not that they could, since Alan owns what he wrote of course)
This kind of action only adds to the licensing mess xfree86 currently is. Working with the xfree86 devlopment team is becoming harder and harder.
I can see why some mandrake users are pissed about this, but in the end it'll be better for everyone.
Jeesussss....... all this over a BSD'ish clause in the new licensing. Can someone give me a rational explanation as to why the GPL is so problematic in this area? What in hell is wrong with giving credit where credit is due (i.e.: I create something based on a BSD 1.x/MIT/X/Hi I require you to give me credit for being the basis of your creation license, and so , being the upright person that I am, I responsibly give credit.) How does this preclude software, any software created under these conditions from being free, unless the original licensing of the 'base' product I used to create my widget isn't going to allow me to give derivitave works away under my own licensing terms (as in free libre/beer, and if it wasn't going to allow me to do this, I'd drop it like a hot bullet and find something else to use)?
I am so glad that I use the *BSD's. Pretty much avoid mess's like this altogether.
Sometimes people just have to learn and adapt to change, it is one of the requirements of being a living thing.
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
I noticed in the first link that they specified that they were remvoing Japanese fonts from Mandrake 10rc1. I happen to use Mandrake because I was impressed with their foreign language support, specifically Japanese. Does anybody know why they are removing Japanese fonts and if there is anything that can be done about it?
freedesktop.org already has replacements for pretty much everything in xfree86. The new license change has just sped up the need for it to work now. They recently released their new xlibs, and Keith Packard is still working on a replacement xserver. The only major problem left is that since the new xserver is a redesign it will need new binary drivers from ati/nvidia.
http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/xserver
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?
The problem is not that those terms are onerous in and of themselves. The problem is that those terms are seemingly incompatible with the GPL, in particular the GPL's requirements that a redistributor of GPL'ed material is not allowed to place additional restrictions on redistribution.
Given that there is a vast amount of GPL'ed software that is linked against X libraries, this would, on the face of it, make it impossible to distribute that GPL'ed software in compliance with both the new XFree86 and GPL licenses. At least, if the GPL'ed software was considered in some way derivative of the XFree86 licensed software.
I'm sure all of this will get sorted out, but people are right to be raising the question right now.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
>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?
You already broke your idea!
Where's the:
(TM) - This post includes "IP" from Hayes, Inc.?
That's why advertising clauses suck. *EVERYTHING* we know of is a dervative of something. Sometimes it'd be nice, though, because it would force companies like Disney to face the music. But most of the time it sucks because you waste more ink thanking dead people and companies than getting work done.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
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
Just out of interest, what is new/changed in 4.4? I looked through the site and didn't find anything. Is it just new hardware support, or more substantial things (ie: proper XRENDER (think that's it anyway) extensions, hardware gl support, rendering of transparancy....)? Anyone got a changelog or brief overview?
I dont see whats the big deal, issues like this can create new tech, and spark new creative ideas in the community.
Oops, I almost forgot:
:)
(TM) This post incldues "IP" from Hayes, Inc, Netcomm Pty Ltd, The SCO Group, Microsoft, Jane Austin, George W. Bush, Tim Burton, Dave Brubeck, Anna Kournikova and Batman.
Thanks for reminding me!
-- Your mother uses Emacs.
Surely you mean "baisez cela!", en francais.
IntechHosting - Free domain, 2GB, PHP, £4.95/$8.95
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.
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.
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.
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.
From: Theo de Raadt
Like other projects, we will not be incorporating new code from David
Dawes into the XFree86 codebase used in OpenBSD. All such changes
have to be skipped, rewritten, or you can contact the XFree86 group
and place your own efforts to repair this damage.
the message continues.. but I think you get the point. Check the mailing list archives for the entire message
I'd suggest that Mandrake people could not be forced (at law) to go back to older versions than what they already use, if they don't want to conform with the new licence and its extra notification conditions.
If anybody has already used and relied on the latest version (or latest -rc) and its associated licence conditions _before_ the recent statement of licence change, it seems likely there would legally be an estoppel to prevent the XFree86 people succeeding if they try to retrospectively enforce a tightening-up of licence terms -- though I guess they can use new terms freely for their own future releases. [btw, of course this is legal debate not legal advice - CYOLA]
It looks, regrettably, like the kind of action that could make a fork viable and even necessary.
-wb-
I could not find it easily on the freedesktop.org page; so what is the license of freedesktop.org? Is it GPL or BSD or the old XFree license or something else?
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
Can't someone fork the 4.3 version and just continue to use the old license?
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
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.
OpenBSD has always been very picky when it comes to respecting licenses (unlike most other OS, they read the Postfix license before putting it on CD's).
:
Here's a recent post from Theo de Raadt on the OpenBSD misc@ mailing list
Like other projects, we will not be incorporating new code from David
Dawes into the XFree86 codebase used in OpenBSD. All such changes
have to be skipped, rewritten, or you can contact the XFree86 group
and place your own efforts to repair this damage.
I've tried to negotiate with David Dawes, and show him that his new
license is not acceptable, and he has been hostile and it has gone
nowhere. He keeps insisting that his license is a standard BSD
licenses, yet, he won't use the same words that Berkeley used; if his
words were intended to be compatible to the Berkeley spirit then he
would be happy to use the same words; but he is not, and insists on
different words which a lot of the community has trouble with.
It seems like every 8 years or so we have to go through some period
where someone tries to take free software and makes it less free
because they don't feel they are getting enough credit.
This is final; if that license stands, there will be forking.
And if you don't like that, don't bother telling me. Tell them.
{{.sig}}
Regardless, whatever. Big words are fun, huh?
Linking against libraries is a derivative work. Otherwise, copyright would be trivial to defeat. Just take the code you want to use and put it in its own shared library, and voila, no copyright issues!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
> (2) the new XFree86 licence is likely not GPL-compatible, which causes huge problems for all distributors, not just Mandrake.
These claims sound really weak, from my POV. I don't know about you (all), if you've ever read the new XFree86 Project License v1.1 or not, but it's really really lesser restrictive then the GPL ever will be.
*yes, that's verry hard to do, mmm, </sarcasm>*, it's no more hassle that puting a 'copyright' disclaimer on something, "You put in in one place, and it's valid for the whole thing", you don't have to include it on overy *freaking page*, one place, is enough;
But, my suspicios is (from the second part of the first claim), that they have allready send the 'STUFF' to print, or something else (like they are "lazy as french are rumored to be"-distro) if they think it's such a hassle to add one or two lines of text in two place (1st: doc or other 'materials', and 2nd: add it to the same place of 'copyright, license and disclaimer information').
Stop b*tching, will ye', and look at the big picture! Let 'them' learn the benefits of OSS on/in their own tempo - don't be/do a 'Bushie' and corner them, and say "either you are with us, or against us" </jissis> ... ever thought, your way ( I say 'your' as I'm not an endores of it) of pushing them, to disclose sources, is the cause of why we haven't seen them embrace Linux/OpenSource with unwillingness?....*/
Yes, I can see/agree it could be a 'hassle', but, not a 'biggy' that couldn't be resolved before their development branch reaches release stage.
*Come on* Let's get real, WE can have a distribution that has components under different licenses, *not a biggy*, you the 'distro maker' licenses your stuff under your license, and the software you incorporated from other sources licences their stuff how they seem fit. Look at an average, Apple Mac OS/Win32 desktop, it's mixed with a bunch of different licences, that the end-user has agreed to abide by.
From my POV, it wouldn't be 'new users who switched' that would find these 'licence' stuff difficult to abide by, but more the PURE OSS minded folks, who've been around th
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
There a small handful of files (main issue is old unix compression for fonts) in XFree86 before the licensing change which are GPL incompatible. After the change the entire XFree86 system is GPL incompatible. Rather than simply saying "stuff you XFree86, you're not that important", you want us to bow down to them and try and figure out that legal quagmire? Here's a wild conspiracy theory for you, MS (and SCO) are paying XFree86 to relicense in this way so they can attack every distribution out there, with 4.4, for not following licenses, Open Source = Pirates.
If somehow it was as simple as you would like to make it out (write XFree86 on packaging) then people might grin and bear it (I doubt it), but when they are making a vast array of programs (GPL) unusable do you really expect just follow along?
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Jeesussss....... all this over a BSD'ish clause in the new licensing. Can someone give me a rational explanation as to why the GPL is so problematic in this area? What in hell is wrong with giving credit where credit is due
A) If you're a nice person, you'd already do that.
B) If you're not a nice person, it can be deeply buried in some obscure reference somewhere.
And if you then start to spell it out in detail exactly how it must be placed so that it *is* visible (like the original BSD licence on advertisements, XFree in documentation) it's bound to be either vastly ineffective against people that aren't nice, or so restrictive it becomes really annoying to people that are. That's what happened with the original BSD licence. I suspect this one is just going to be ineffective.
I imagine the reason for this whole crap is that under the BSD licence, the source doesn't need to be released, so in a proprietary app noone will know about it. While with a GPL'd program, everyone can read the source and see if they're using other people's work, and give them bad karma about it.
Anyway, if the beef was with proprietary apps, there would be a really really simple solution. EITHER acknowledge in documentation, OR distribute source where the copyright headers would be the acknowledgement. That should be fully GPL compatible, and provide a way to verify that BSD code was used under all circumstances. It's not like the exposure would be much different, very few read either the acknowledgements or the copyright headers...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This will be the death of us all.. Too many restrictive/conflicting licenses..
Will end up where no one can do anything with out stepping on someone elses license/patent/copyright.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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."
Or maybe you'd prefer FreeXFree?
F.O.Dobbs
Gentoo aren't including any new xfree releases (>4.3.99.902) until the licence is sorted out.
From the analysis I've seen in Debian lists, the new license wouldn't really be a problem if it just applied to the Xserver. The problem comes with the X client libraries (xlib and friends) that have to be linked with GPL (and other, the GPL is not the only problem here) programs.
Now, when it comes to the users, most of the new features they want have to do with hardware support, which is an Xserver feature. So it's possible that, as an interim solution, systems could be shipped with the new, ugly-licensed Xserver, but with older-but-sanely-licensed xlibs. This would seem to address everyone's issues fairly well.
I've always felt it was a bit of a mistake to have the client-side and server-side of XFree86 tied together anyway. They are pretty much independent, and I think it might make the most sense for XFree86 to abandon the client side, and just focus on making Xservers, while Freedesktop could ignore the server side (at least for now) and focus on the client libraries. Would make both parties jobs easier.
From the looks of the screen shots on their web page these projects seem like an interesting alternative that can potentially put the Linux desktop at a stage not achievable via X alone - A true alpha blended desktop!!!... haven't tried it out cuz the driver support seems lacking... is there any way to port drivers from X into this project without causing all sorts of license problems?
Reading this YADAX (yet another discussion about X) here and problems with same, I remembered that a while ago a bunch of people set out to write a replacement, first called "Berlin", later Fresco. But the "latest news" on their web page is about ten months old. Is Fresco dead or just resting after a prolonged squawk?
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/
there's no problem linking GPL code to non-free X11 implementations, such as OpenWindows, so why would there be a problem linking it with a Free X11 implementation like XFree86-4.4?
This isn't an ideological issue on the part of Linux distros. The only Linux distros that will be able to live with XFree's new license are source based distros like Gentoo. Linking GPLed source with the new XFree86 is no problem provided you do it yourself. Distributing the binaries is. For all that the likes of SCO say that IP isn't respected, it is. The new XFree86 will make it potentially illegal to distribute vast tracts of software as binaries. This is not a practical situation for the Linux distros.
There will eventually be a fork of XFree86 that the distros will use. It will this fork that gets the drivers and eventually most other development as well. What we really should be worried about is Debian having one codebase, RedHat another, and Suse still another. The sooner there is a legally kosher common codebase the better.
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.
Dave Dawes message went to the contributors asking them if they wanted their contribution as is or changed to his new license. I wanted my contributions usable by all the X projects, including whoever finally gets annoyed enough to fork XFree.
BTW for Mandrake people (and mandrake themselves) there is a driver for the VIA chipset including DRI on ftp://people.redhat.com/alan. There is also a patch from Bero on the the dri Wiki which you may need depending which Mesa you use. I (and Im sure VIA who wrote most of the driver!) would love to see the via driver in Mandrake's XFree 4.3 packages if they go that way.
I also hope to have an accelerated Voodoo2 driver with DGA and maybe render acceleration available in the next couple of weeks - and that doesn't need Glide.
Windows has drawing issues too. Classic MacOS had the same issue. Mac OS X is the only OS I know of that doesn't have the drawing issue. The RAM and Processor requirements for keeping the screen buffer are rather large, which is why the other, older systems don't have it. Even on a Mac, there are still problems. Moving a window might be smooth but resizing it isn't. I have a Dual 1.2Ghz G4 with a Radeon 8500 at home. There's no reason such a system should have drawing issues yet it does. My PC at work running Linux handles window resizing better than my Mac.
Windows will get a screen buffer in Longhorn.
X will get one when someone writes it. I'm pretty sure there is work going on to put something like this in X already.
Link
OpenBSD has imported the XFree4.4 Release Candidate immediately before this stupid licensing change and will be basing further work off that.
I don't think that it will be long before these efforts link up and produce a viable fork.
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)
As I said in the subject Darl == David Dawes. This man had done more to piss off developers then anyone except maybe Darl from our beloved SCO Group..See email below from the xfree86 mailing list:
On Sat, Jan 31, 2004 at 03:17:42PM +1100, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
>Hi David !
>
>> On looking through the fbdev drivers in the Linux kernel source, I see
>> very few cases where license notices from XFree86 driver source are
>> included. This means that either the license for these drivers has no
>> impact on the work you are talking about (making what you have written
>> above moot), or some authors of portions of the current Linux fbdev code
>> have violated the terms of the existing licenses by not including a
>> verbatim copy of the copyright, license notice, and disclaimer text in
>> relevant source code.
>>
>> I would also like to echo Egbert's comments about the one-way nature of
>> your concerns.
>
>I'm mostly concerned at this point about radeonfb and rivafb. The radeonfb
>in the current mainstream kernel was written by Ani Joshi who also wrote the
>first radeon driver in XFree. So there wasn't any liencing issue at this
>point.
>However, I rewrote the kernel driver almost completely using a lot of
>informations from the XFree one as ATI is maintaining it actively.
>
>My rewritten radeonfb driver _do_ contain a copy of the licence included
>in the XFree one along with the (c) assignement.
So there is no problem as far as radeonfb is concerned. The licence
choice for a driver always has been (and still is) the authors' choice.
The same applies for other code in XFree86. If the authors' choice is
incompatible with your preferences, then you are free to discuss that
with the authors. Licences like the modified XFree86 licence have
*always* been acceptable to XFree86, and some code in XFree86 already
carried licences like this prior to our latest modification. I haven't
seen great objections to that before. Why now?
Back to the XFree86 radeon driver, the listed copyright holders for the
bulk of that code are ATI and VA. If those copyright holders were to
change their licenses (and whether they do or not is entirely up to
them), then you would have to approach them about such changes if they
happened to be incompatible with your requirements.
>The fact that it is mostly a one way is mostly due to the fact that the
>main problem here is seeking for HW informations. Card vendors put that
>information into XFree via drivers, we rely on this for the kernel drivers.
Speaking from my own experience, a big reason why it is one way is
because many developers err on the side of caution to avoid infecting
their code with the GPL virus, and to avoid baseless accusations from
the GPL zealots that they have illegally "stolen" GPL'd code.
Perhaps a more serious part of the "one way" problem is this very
discussion. Has anyone considered modifying the GPL to be more compatible
with other Open Source licences rather than trying to force all Open
Source licences to be a subset of the GPL? To me it seems a signficant
flaw to the GPL if it is incompatible with Open Source developers' desire
to receive due credit for their work from those who redistribute it.
If GPL compatibility is such a big issue to GPL advocates, then perhaps,
for their own benefit, it needs to be more accomodating than it currently
is.
David
--
David Dawes
developer/release engineer The XFree86 Project
www.XFree86.org/~dawes
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!
It's *written* consent from all authors. It's just like the old BSD license when it had the advertising license where you had to list all contributors of a project if you advertised the software. Meaning if you had 1000 developers for a project that would easily fill an entire page in a magazine.
Huh?
Where do you see that in the 4 clause license?
It only has 4 requirements.
1. All source distributions must include the license.
2. Binary distributions must include the license in the same location as other copyright licenses.
3. End user docs (if any) must include an acknowlegement of use.
4. You can not use the name The XFree86 Project, Inc in advertising without prior permission.
There is NOTHING else there. Where does "Version 1.1 of XFree86 Project License" say what you said?
BWP
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.
The X Consortium has made this software non-free.
The X Consortium had nothing to do with it - it hasn't existed since 1994. This license change was done by the XFree86 Project, Inc.
The current successor of the X Consortium is the X.org Foundation, which has not adopted this new license, and in fact, has stopped importing code from XFree86 into the X.org CVS tree because of it.
Thx that was my plan to use your driver in my next build.
Fred - May the source be with you
What exactly has changed in the 4.4 release?
... [or] in the software itself, in the same form and location as other such third-party acknowledgments [apparently if you don't put it in the end-user documentation]."
Very little, in fact. The old license (1.0) required:
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 THE XFREE86 PROJECT 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.
Except as contained in this notice, the name of the XFree86 Project shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization from the XFree86 Project.
The new license makes this a bit more specific:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions, and the following disclaimer.
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.
4. Except as contained in this notice, the name of The XFree86 Project, Inc shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization from The XFree86 Project, Inc.
You'll note that point 4 was already in the old license, and that the required notices are exactly the same. So what's different?
In reality, not much at all! The new license just makes specific that if you are distributing XFree86 in binary form, you must include the notices in "the same place and form as other copyright, license and disclaimer information" and/or in "the same place and form as other third-party acknowledgments [are in the end-user documentation, if such documentation exists]
So, in other words, they want credit for writing your X server and libraries, of you want to leverage that software. They're concerned that the old license appeared only to require that you only give credit if you distributed it in source form. Notably, nothing in this new license requires that you list the names of all the programmers, only "The XFree86 Project, Inc (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors."
The problem isn't the X server. It's badly written software or toolkits. Properly written X appications won't smear like that. Xterm doesn't do it. I write X applications and they don't have the problem.
The most likely cause of the problem is that the program has a very slow redraw function, probably due to object-oriented code, and calls that function in full on every Expose event. The way I avoid the problem is to check for events within the redraw loop using XPending(3X11). I check once every N drawing elements, and if I never get events, I increase N within that one redraw, increasing efficiency. If I do get an event, I terminate the redraw and return control to the main event switch statement.
Mozilla Firebird has the problem to a much smaller extent than plain Mozilla, for some reason.
I anticipate your saying, "You had to apply a crude hack." Well, that's not it. It takes time and effort to master X programming; that's a consequence of X's power and flexibility. There's nothing wrong with XFree86's implementation of X that I've run into. X takes the blame for a lot of mistakes by application and toolkit programmers.
Since the last story on Slashdot about this, I've been wondering why no one seems to bring up that GPL programs are allowed to link to non-GPL (even closed/proprietary) libraries. Not in general, of course, but the GPL does actually allow this in the case of OS libraries. I don't think anyone realistically could contest that XFree86 is a system library in pretty much any distribution (MacOS X and cygwin come to mind as the likely exceptions).
The point here is that XFree86 could go closed source and it would still have no effect on GPL programs in the common cases. So, the GPL angle is basically a red herring.
(That said, I do think the license change qualifies as a pretty seriously dumb idea.)
The method I described isn't to stop smearing - rather it's to stop the app from spazzing out and using 100% CPU during dragging/resizing. That would be the natural consequence of an app redrawing a complex window for each Expose event.
It looks like Mozilla took the easier approach, to postpone the redraw completely until the Expose events stop coming. That works fine with profile (non opaque) window dragging, but in combination with opaque dragging it causes smearing. On each Expose event, the app should at least fill the window with its background color, which is almost instantaneous. That will override the smearing.
Using the method described in my previoius comment will draw as much of the display list as the app has time for, improving the realism of the drag metaphor at some expense in CPU utilization.
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
Don't worry, we already had integrate part of your work on VIA driver in Mdk 9.2 and we will finish integration for 10.0
Yeah I remember when I had a 486 DX2-66 and I tried dragging xterms around I used to get some bad redraw stuff happening. Sometimes I'd even get artifacts that would stay behind after the window had passed on.
What you have to do, dude, is get yourself another computer. I just performed your Window Drag Test (TM) and found that my windows drag around perfectly, as I seem to remember them doing for the past 5 years.
When people first sit down in front of a Linux computer, they don't do your patented fuck-tard test. "And it's killing us". Yeah right. I'm dying over here. My fucking 486 won't drag around my xterm across my twm desktop at an acceptable rate.
Tosspot.
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