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XFree86 4.4 Released
puriots0 writes "XFree86 version 4.4 is finally out! Grab it while it's still hot, if you don't mind the recent licensing changes... And if you don't care about the license, but the maintainers of your distribution do, this might be the only way to get it for the moment." The XFree86 people seem very eager to claim that the new license is nothing bad; see their FAQ. However, people who have reviewed it, such as RMS and Branden Robinson, think differently. It looks as if the XFree86 people have a short timespan to either rethink their license changes or be dropped from every/almost every Linux distribution in favor of a forked codebase.
won't be able to get it at all soon..
There are no compelling new features, apart from some routine driver updates, which can be backported. The ONLY reason why they upgraded is so they can have this dracronian licence! You need to give a crap, what if they updated it again, sayihg that they reserve the right to come around to your house and confiscate your computer if you don't agree.
found here
This is exactly correct. It is not a technical issue at all. The issue stems from the fact that the GPL steeals code, and doens't attribute where it comes from. This is the core issue! If I write a groovy program, and some GPL zealot decided it is suitable for their needs, they can simply take it, remove any mention of my authorship, and call it theirs under the GPL. So not only is the GPL viral, it is also unethical.
Remember the GPL was writen specificly to combat the Freedoms, and virtue of the BSD style license. RMS while at MIT saw much code beign writen in BSD style license, and some of that code was converted to proprietary code. This is how the GPL was born. Beings forced to maintain a list of contributors is against the idea of a non-free license like the GPL, and makes it harder to assymilate code that isn't yours.
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
Their main feature is "Translucent windows" fer chrissakes. Typical adolescent linux fanboys, move along, nothing to see there.
Yes really! But in the context of binary distribution, not source code. In other words, lots of people contribute to the Free Xfee86 project, and under the terms of the new license. If you decided to distribute a livecd that ran whatever OS, it would seem that these license terms stipulate that a list of the contributors follow that binary distributions. Such as a fiel which holds the names of contributors.
That is why this entire thing is so absurd, that it is silly. Basicly what is happening is by design of the FSF. We have reached a place where the GPL has a monoploy on OSS, which is in turn being used against the community at large. Well I suspect the XFree86n foundation simply is feed up with it, and this is their way to point out these facts.
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
Yes, XFree86.org was the ineffiency and has finally been removed from the picture.
NO MORON. I was saying that NT is NOT derived from BSD. Hence, the post I was REPLYING TO.
Fuck, people on Slashdot are stupid sometimes.