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.

Comments

From the FAQ

[Space cowboy]

What about GPL-compatibility?

The 1.1 license is not GPL-compatible. To avoid new issues with application programs that may be licensed under the GPL, the 1.1 licence is not being applied to client side libraries.

So, it seems that the main reason for a fork is no longer an issue ? No-one is going to be writing a new X-Server (well, I guess some of the embedded folks might, but that's about all I can think of), and they state that there's no issues with any client programs that you link with ... No problem for most of us then, unless it's for political reasons.

My position is that if you write/own the code you get to say how it's used. I don't think there's *any* argument against that, and I can see why they want to promote themselves in this world where perception is all. The issue is that all decisions have consequences - which may be why client-programs are not part of the deal :-) I seriously doubt that XFree86 *want* a code fork, and I think that freedesktop.org will give them a serious run for their money if the fork goes ahead.

I wonder if the forking argument itself (please say that correctly :-) has gathered sufficient momentum to cause the predicted split though - that would be a pity if so. For all that KDE and Gnome are competing desktops, and they have both co-evolved to their benefit over time, I think two competing windowing-system standards might have a harder time co-evolving... If they didn't, you'd have to wonder why there were 2 in the first place!

Simon.

Re:From the FAQ

[Ed Avis]

It prevents you including GPL-licensed code in an X server derived from XFree86; that is enough reason for Debian to avoid the new release, it seems.

Interesting that the FAQ now acknowledges that the 1.1 licence does not permit redistribution under the GPL; before, the XFree86 people were insisting that in their opinion it was allowed. Unless I'm confusing two different licences here.

Re:From the FAQ

[petabyte]

No, from what I'm told, the main reason to fork is the attitude taken by some members of the XFree Core Team. As you said, its their code and they can do what they want but the forking has already happened:

Xouvert
Freedesktop
Cygwin X

Personally I don't see myself ever using XFree 4.4 and am looking forward to a complete release of fd.o. When that happens, I'll likely be moving everything I can off XFree but that's just me.

Re:From the FAQ

[Nuclear Elephant]

No-one is going to be writing a new X-Server

On the contrary, FreeDesktop.org is writing one, and it's A. much more promising (supports some neat things too like drop shadows and translucent menus), and B. based on the original XFree86 libraries.

Re:From the FAQ

[mmurphy000]

So, it seems that the main reason for a fork is no longer an issue ? No-one is going to be writing a new X-Server (well, I guess some of the embedded folks might, but that's about all I can think of), and they state that there's no issues with any client programs that you link with ... No problem for most of us then, unless it's for political reasons.

I think part of the concern is over long-term intent. Mr. Dawes says applying the license to client-side libraries is "deferred", implying that it might be applied sometime later, though it appears that he thinks GPL compatibilty for the client-side libraries is somewhat important.

...I can see why they want to promote themselves in this world where perception is all.

Apache used to have an advertising clause and dropped it, yet people still know about Apache. Moreover, the number of people who will even notice these "advertisements" are fairly few -- how many ordinary folk are going to read and understand these lists of attributions? If they want XFree86.org to be on everyone's lips (for positive reasons), they'll need something more than this clause.

Re:From the FAQ

[platipusrc]

I think that what you're referring to is the Apache 2.0 license that had a clause about patents that some said conflicted with the GNU GPL but that the Apache Group said did not. I'm not sure, but I think the Apache 2.0 license has been revised further to make it more clear that it is GNU GPL compatible.

Re:From the FAQ

[plcurechax]

BTW since microsoft used the BSD license ip stack doesn't that make their EULA just as viral by this logic?


Yes, you cannot take any Microsoft changes to the BSD tcp/ip stack and re-introduce them back into BSD code bases, since the EULA prevents that.

Re:From the FAQ

[msh104]

indeed, it is very neat. the problem is that all the drivers will need to be rewritten/ported. you can't just write wrappers around the old drivers. right now we only have fbdev/vesa stuff and some other stuff you really don't want to use right now. getting the drivers finisched right now is more important then ever.

Re:From the FAQ

[Ann Elk]

Except that Microsoft does not use the BSD IP stack.

• I worked for nearly 10 years in the Windows NT networking group.
• I worked very closely with the guys who wrote the TCP/IP stack that shipped with NT 3.51 and later.
• I know the NT TCP/IP sources very well.
• There is some residual BSD sources in the resolver (DNS client) code (most of which has been rewritten), and in the piece-of-shit FTP client, but not in the TCP/IP stack.

Re:From the FAQ

[msh104]

just wondering, why do you think many of the windows 2000 folks upgraded to XP? because it had a shiny happy interface. it might not be a good reason to upgrade, but it is a fact that 99% of the users love eye candy over stability/usability/security whatever. I myself think kde and such have enough eye candy already. I really can't care is they use real or fake transparantie. I agree with you that it is time to work on creating stable good code. there is allready enough candy for everybody.

Re:From the FAQ

[Ed Avis]

I think there may be a licence incompatibility in that any work derived from the BSD code must give credit in docs and help screens, but the GPL does not have any such restriction, so if you tried to distribute the work under the GPL then you would have lost the restriction about giving credit, and (by some legal theory I don't understand and which may or may not exist) the people who get the code from you and try to exercise their rights under the GPL would be infringing the copyright on the BSD-licensed code.

Similarly, if I had some code that said 'you can use this but only while doing a handstand' and tried to combine it with GPL'd code, I couldn't distribute the resulting work under the GPL because people receiving it wouldn't know about the handstand condition. I would have to distribute it under 'GPL plus handstand' - but then this wouldn't be allowed by the GPLd code I started with, since you're not allowed to add extra restrictions.

Re:From the FAQ

[be-fan]

The underlying framework supports drop-shadows and translucent menus, but can be used for much more:

- OpenGL will be used for drawing, so you can have very rich, yet fast, vector-graphics based applications.

- Back-buffering each window (which is what enables transparency and shadows) allows you to eliminate all sorts of flicker and lag during resizing and window moving.

- New extensions (Composite + XDamage) allow for clever window managers to do useful things like Expose-style features, screen-scrapers (for things like VNC), magnification tools, etc.

Re:From the FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

if so, I think we should mainly focus on finishing up the user interface and making it more robust

You're right, of course. As the project manager of Anyone Anywhere Who Has Ever Written Any Free Software, I will make sure to let them know that shadows and transparency are officially pushed back to 2005, and all man hours are to be spent on Robustosity.

I'll also redirect the efforts of those guys in France who were writing ANOTHER image gallery program. Seriously, don't we have enough? We're working on Robustness now, guys! Pay attention!

Re:From the FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh? Linux isn't going to have "even a chance" if it doesn't have gumdrop widgets, translucency, drop-shadows and other visual frills which add NOTHING to productivity?

Ah yeah, because Windows 95 never had a chance did it? Not MacOS before X? You have no idea what you're talking about. Desktop success comes via a strong application base, reliability, ease-of-updating and other factors.

It's in no way "critical", as other OSes have shown. Besides, your "even a chance" is nonsensical, as Linux desktop adoption has surpassed Apple's. It's still small, but it's growing rapidly.

Re:From the FAQ

[macshit]

It is well known that you cannot freely mix BSD (old 4 clause or new 3 clause) licensed code with GPL code in the same code base.

No, it's not `well known', and in fact, it's not true!

The revised (`3 clause') BSD license is perfectly compatible with the GPL. Since 99.9% of all `BSD licensed' code uses the revised BSD license, there's basically no problem at all.

Of course the resulting aggregate program must have its source distributed (&c) as part of its source uses the GPL, but that's pretty obvious if you're using GPL'd source code.

[The original (`4 clause') BSD license is indeed incompatible with the GPL, but that's largely academic, as no one actually uses that anymore.]

Re:From the FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

I know the NT TCP/IP sources very well.

Yeah, and now so do we.

Re:Licensing

[MooKore 2004]

Its not just linux, the BSDs are against these changes too. Ironicly too, since their licence used to be like this one.

Re:Licensing

[pe1rxq]

No, in a little while they will prove that nomatter what companies/organizations do it will continue fine without them....
The great thing about free software is that you can only be in control as long as you don't piss off a critical set of developpers.

Jeroen

What other alternatives?

[brainkiller]

What other alternatives are there to Xfree?

Re:What other alternatives?

[Sweetshark]

Freedesktop X server
y windows

Re:What other alternatives?

[mst76]

All alternatives suffer from a lack of (accelerated) drivers.

Re:What other alternatives?

[NanoGator]

"What other alternatives are there to Xfree? "

Windows, but if the license of X is what really bugs you...

Re:What other alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

> that's bullshit.
> freedesktops server is just build on xfree86. same drivers.

I think you've confused freedesktop with Xouvert. Xouvert is a fork from XFree86, but they don't appear to have any of their own code yet, and people have been questioning if the project is still alive. The freedesktop Xserver is an independent implementation, based on Keith Packard's Kdrive Xserver. From the freedesktop Xserver FAQ:

Q: Couldn't we just write a wrapper for XFree86 drivers and use them?

A: Essentially, no. There are a large number of calls from XFree86 drivers into XFree86's DDX layer. Furthermore, XFree86 drivers don't support acceleration in the same way, so offscreen pixmaps wouldn't be supportable as far as I know.

Xserver

[MooKore 2004]

Maybe its time to get more people looking at Xserver?

So they stick to the new license...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the deal.. if the new license isn't such a big deal, why doesn't the XFree group revert ot the old one? There is something in the new license that is really important to them, so its not exactly a minor wording change. If this were a lot of trouble over nothing, they would have backed off to a license they've _been_ releasing code under for years. I'll stick with the version that people with more legal experience than me say is best. I thank RMS and the distros for watching out for me by keeping up with these licensing issues.

Re:So they stick to the new license...

[mehaiku]

"why doesn't the XFree group revert ot the old one?"

Let's not please. Have you seen how fast the latest Linux 2.6.3 kernel is? Now imagine combining that with the speed of the latest KDE 3.2.0. What ingredient is still missing? A forked, reworked, optimized Xserver perhaps? Please Xfree group, for the love of God, keep the license as it is.

Re:So they stick to the new license...

[leereyno]

The problem is that this isn't a legal issue, its a political/ideological one. The fact that the FSF crowd coaches ideological arguments in legal terms doesn't mean there is a legal issue here.

The FSF doesn't like the new license and begins telling people that it is incompatible with the GPL. Does that mean they are right? Does the GPL mean whatever the FSF decides it means that week? Or, in a country governed by the rule of law, does it mean no more and no less that what it be proven to mean in court? I don't know about you, but I tend to believe the latter

More importantly, what exactly is the FSF supposed to do about people who don't agree with their current take and make use of Apache/XFree86-4.4 anyway? Are they going to sue them? Do they have the money, let alone the ability convince a court that the suit isn't frivilous? More importantly, can they afford the ill will that would result?

I personally don't understand why XFree considers this change so important, but neither do I see it as a harmful one. They are not attempting to make any changes to how anyone uses their code, only asking that they receive recognition for their work. Isn't that something that RMS has been whining about for years with his GNU/Linux nonsense? He "corrects" people for calling Linux Linux every chance he gets. In fact I read an article where the author claimed that RMS refused to give an interview unless the article used his preferred terminology.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Lee

Re:So they stick to the new license...

[mst76]

The FSF doesn't like the new license and begins telling people that it is incompatible with the GPL. Does that mean they are right?

I don't know, but from the FAQ it seems that The XFree86 Project Inc. agrees with the FSF here.

They are not attempting to make any changes to how anyone uses their code, only asking that they receive recognition for their work. Isn't that something that RMS has been whining about for years with his GNU/Linux nonsense? He "corrects" people for calling Linux Linux every chance he gets.

RMS can ask recognition from distributors, but he can't legally demand it. XFree86 just changed their license so that they can.

Re:So they stick to the new license...

[mcc]

The FSF doesn't like the new license and begins telling people that it is incompatible with the GPL. Does that mean they are right? Does the GPL mean whatever the FSF decides it means that week?

Well, the FSF did a very good job of backing up their claim that it is incompatible with the GPL. They pointed to the exact sections where the incompatibility occurs. Most people, including a number of the major Linux distributions, seem to agree with the FSF on this interpretation.

The "this week" comment is misleading. The FSF has never changed their opinion on the correct interpretation of the GPL and has tried to make the implications of this interpretation as clear as possible from day one.

More importantly, what exactly is the FSF supposed to do about people who don't agree with their current take and make use of Apache/XFree86-4.4 anyway? Are they going to sue them?

If someone alters a GPL program such that the code is linked with code from an incompatible license, the copyright holder of that code is within their rights to order the distributor of the mixed code to stop. If that distributor does not stop, the copyright holder is within their rights to sue the distributor to make them stop.

If the FSF were the copyright holder, they probably would sue if they absolutely had to in order to ensure compliance with the GPL. The FSF does hold the copyright on many open source projects, so this is a possibility.

Do they have the money, let alone the ability convince a court that the suit isn't frivilous?

Actually, yes, the main function of the FSF is to serve as a central copyright repository for open source and trust fund for the legal defense of those copyrights.

More importantly, can they afford the ill will that would result?

Can the open source software community afford to exist in a manner in which licenses are addressed in a slapdash, "oh that's close enough" manner? Since the nature of Open Source is to coordinate input from many contributors, the exact manner in which the rights and licensing to that input is marshalled is of extreme importance. The rights framework for open source needs to be clear and solid.

Moreover, I'm not sure exactly how much ill will the FSF would garner for enforcing the requirement that if you redistribute GPLed code you follow the terms of the GPL, especially since, well, if the GPL isn't going to be complied with then why does it exist in the first place? The only ill will this would generate is among people who don't think anything should be GPLed ever, and they hate the FSF anyway, so what's the loss?

Re:So they stick to the new license...

[Alan Cox]

ex-Free86 8)

What???

[Azureflare]

What do you mean? How will it be the downfall of linux? Some people don't like the way a project is going, so they start a fork with the same codebase. People choose the best of the two forks, and then most people go to the new fork.

Sure, it seems bad while it's happening, but in the end you get a better product. Often projects get way too political and forking is a way to bypass that bureaucratic nightmare.

Re:What???

[Rick Zeman]

What do you mean? How will it be the downfall of linux? Some people don't like the way a project is going, so they start a fork with the same codebase. People choose the best of the two forks, and then most people go to the new fork.
Sure, it seems bad while it's happening, but in the end you get a better product. Often projects get way too political and forking is a way to bypass that bureaucratic nightmare.

Do you get a better product? Maybe...BUT, and this a big but, what about the products that have to choose which fork to follow when they've diverged far enough to be incompatible? Which version of X am I going to write GeeWhizMaGraph to use? These forks are even worse overall than distro fragmentation looking at linux at a macro level.
Whoever modded my original post as flamebait can bite me. Get a clue.

Aarrr...

[wesman83]

the GPL be a harsh mistress....

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

The XF86 project is distributing the 4.4 code under only the new license.

Have any of the individual XF86 *contributors* come forward and said their portions of 4.4 may be used under the previous license at the user's option?

Oh REALLY?!?!?

[ZuperDee]

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.

Am I the only one here who thinks it is possible that license change or not, some distributions are getting ready to dump XFree86 in ANY case, due to the other problems it has, like the general arrogance of the core developers, and the lack of a truly open development community, which is largely their doing?

Seriously, I don't think the license change is the major reason, but simply the right occasion for dumping XFree86. Even if they were to revert the license change tomorrow, I for one would still favor seeing forks like Freedesktop.org's server make it into distros, because I believe the license change is only one of MANY indications that XFree86 has far deeper problems that I'm not so sure can be fixed so easily. Just like many organizations and projects in real life, the PEOPLE behind the project are the greatest asset, and I think the XFree86 core team has failed to recognize this. Unless the core team gets a total attitude makeover, I doubt this will ever change.

Re: None, for users.

[plcurechax]

What other alternatives are there to Xfree?

There are not suitable alternatives for end-users on Linux and BSD on recent hardware. freedesktop.org is an experimental play-area for developers where exciting new features are currently being developed not mundane things like updated drivers for newer video cards (Radeon 9600, 3rd party 9200LE, newer Intel 845 series, etc.), not robust "production quality" software for end-users, Xouvert doesn't actual have any unique code of their own the last time I looked, and Y Window system is more an idea and a work in progress.

Hopeful about the post-X era

[Ars-Fartsica]

Can we get rid of a system that resolves all dependencies internally? (would like to finish a compile this year)

Can we get rid of the X11R6 subdir? (once again, stop thinking X is a world to itself)?

Just two suggestions for the post-XFree86 era.

Re:Hopeful about the post-X era

[Majix]

Can we get rid of the X11R6 subdir? (once again, stop thinking X is a world to itself)?

Yes. This is being done for the Freedesktop.org X server. See here for more information. And about time! Another thing is that the horrible imake system is being removed (I personally would like to see it taken out behind the barn and shot). Looks like these guys are serious about dragging X into the 21st century.

Debian avoiding the new release??

[niom]

XFree86 4.3 just got into Debian unstable. Debian won't arrive at avoiding 4.4 until eight or nine months from now.

Re:Debian avoiding the new release??

[calc]

Debian will probably switch to freedesktop.org packages much quicker than previous XFree86 packages due to upstream finally maintaining them properly. XFree86 was monolithic, freedesktop.org is not. XFree86 never cared about non-x86 architectures, it appears freedestkop.org will. XFree86 was a closed development model, freedesktop.org isn't...

I've said it before and I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux will get nowhere in the consumer market for as long as any user-- anywhere-- has to be aware of the existence of the XF86Config file.

Re:It's sad ...

[Nugget]

This is, in effect, nothing more than saying "Everyone can get along just great if only you people would just agree with me."

RMS designed the GPL to be hard to work with. It seems a bit myopic to now act all surprised that it is working as designed and to try to blame everyone else for its inflexible nature.

That the GPL can't coexist with other licenses was a design goal of the GPL. It's unreasonable to be upset with deverlopers using other licenses for this fact which is beyond their control.

XFree86 and licensing

[Sandmann]

I think it is worth pointing out that back in 1998 The Open Group (now known as X.org) changed the licensing of X R6.4 to be proprietary, and only backed down when XFree86 and David Dawes explained exactly what they could with their proprietary server.

XFree86 is the reason we have a free software X server today. It is quite ironic that slashdot is now hating XFree86 because of licensing.

Re:Licensing

[pe1rxq]

And not having the need for this backing is the great thing. The moment this backing dissapears for a closed source program you have no option what so ever. If that happens to an open source program than you can still use it, make legal copies of it and can even improve it.

You see software as a product, you should regard is as infrastructure. Somehow a society manages to build and support a road system.... and its not by magic.
When the original builder is gone you can still use the road, and if you don't know how to fill a hole you get somebody to do it for you. And if you are really lucky you will get some community of road users to do it collectivly (something like a government perhaps?)

Jeroen

Re:As someone who cares not about the license

[plcurechax]

* Several stability issues with the support for the Intel 830M, 845G, 852G, 855M and 865G integrated graphics chipsets have been fixed. Some limitation related to the driver's use of the video BIOS remain, especially for some laptops.

* The nv driver for NVIDIA cards has been updated as follows:

* Support added to the nv driver for the GeForce FX 5700, which didn't work with XFree86 4.3.
* The driver now does a much better job of auto-detecting which connector of dual output cards the monitor is attached to, and this should reduce or eliminate the need for manual XF86Config overrides.
* The 2D acceleration for TNT and GeForce has been completely rewritten and its performance should be substantially improved.
* TNT and GeForce cards have new XvPutImage adapter which does scales YUV bit blits.

The SiS driver has seen major updates, including:
* Support for 661/741/760 and support for 330 (Xabre).
* Merged Framebuffer mode.
* Support for DVI, and much more.
* DRI for 300 series (300/305, 540, 630, 730) is supported again.

A new driver for several VIA integrated graphics chipsets has been added.

* The mouse driver has some support on Linux and FreeBSD for auto-detecting the device to use. This makes it unnecessary to supply this information in the XF86Config file in most cases.

* XFree86 4.4 supports IPv6, based on the code contributed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. to X.Org.

* The Mesa version used for OpenGL(R) 1.3 and DRI driver support has been updated to 5.0.2.

* FreeType 2 updated to version 2.1.4. ...

So we stick with 4.3. Big deal.

[nurb432]

Instead of freaking out, we as a community just drop 4.4 out the window, and stick with 4.3 until a viable alternative X server comes out.

As long as someone still develops drivers for 4.3, its not the end of the world. ( yes, its a major speed bump and makes the OSS world look stupid for the bickering.. but its not a show stopper )

And remember its just the XF86Free implementation that is hosed up now, not the X11 protocol..

When Announcing A New Version Of Something

[vigilology]

Perhaps it's best to list the main changes or include a link to the changelog.

another nice article...

[gerbouille]

there's a nice article on OSnews which looks back on the whole XFree86 affair of past year ...

Re:features?

[plcurechax]

I just want a gui that works nice. What features are in the new X?

X is a low-level windowing system, not a desktop environment like CDE, KDE, GNOME, (or twm :).

It's new features are support for newer video cards, bug fixes and work arounds for broken video cards (and Dell laptop BIOSes with regards to VESA modes and 845 chipsets), IPv6 support, new version of Mesa (OpenGL 3D support), and FreeType (font library).

Re:Licensing

[(H)elix1]

These licensing problems and forks will turn out to be the downfall of Linux.

I'd call forking natural selection... and while it can be painful, I would say it makes things stronger. Projects that head out into the weeds loose mind share (developers, users, 'buzz' if you will..) and disappear. The beauty of Linux is you get to scratch your itch. Often others share the same problem, and may share a solution. Someone running the project goes off into a wild tangent, good for them. Might be a little pain as you switch to something that is more aligned to what you were after, but odds are you can.

A personal example? I let myself get lulled into the RPM package management and really felt like I got the shaft when RH dropped the 'non-enterprise' user who did not have mad cash for per machine/per year subscriptions. All the packaged distros seemed to share the same Achilles heel (in my mind). Hunkered down and went Gentoo rather than putting energy into Fedora. If ebuilds fade away, I'll look at the app-get thing...

Forking thins the hurd (-1, terrible joke)

About the ad clause

[PotatoHead]

These guys are wanting some attention, so they whine a little and get nothing. Then they force the issue and get the wrong sort.

Seems to me, credit is given where credit is due. If they actually were doing something worth really knowing about, wouldn't they actually get it? We have been seeing little spats happen for long enough now to raise a few eyebrows. Personally, I suspect some deeper problems behind this.

We need an active X development group that does everything it can to enable *nix systems to continue to develop. We don't need these petty squabbles.

Those of us who know what X brings to the table are happy using X. Replacing it really should not be an option at this point; however, I see plenty of folks not happy with X as it is today.

This is exactly why they are not getting the attention they crave. The job is not being done well enough plain and simple.

Fork or no, this is going to continue to be a problem until a group forms that can step up to the plate and hit a few home runs. Will it be the XFree guys or somebody else?

Whoever gets X development moving as it needs to will get all the attention they need. Stupid license clauses won't cut it.

X servers on Freedesktop

[Alan Cox]

There are two X servers on freedesktop.org. One is Keiths experimental server the other is the X.org tree which is XFree 4.4 without the license change bits and with other stuff, and most of the people Dave Dawes fired working on it.

The x.org server is very much ready for prime time

Embroidering!

[Imperator]

That's what Linux needs! Proper support for embroidering! I hope the fd.o people get around to this soon. Linux really has opportunities in the market for embroidered devices...

Remember XFree...

[sla291]

XFree is dying, maybe.

Most say that it sucks. I say it's not perfect but check this website : http://www.lynucs.org/

and you'll see that X can really make your desktop very eye-candy. (well, perhaps you already knew ;)

Don't blame XFree too much.. we're pretty all using it, even it may be the time to move on.

Re:From the FAQ (re GPL + APL-2.0)

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

I'm not sure, but I think the Apache 2.0 license has been revised further to make it more clear that it is GNU GPL compatible

Unfortunately not. Instead of fixing the problem, the Apache group made a public statement to say that the incompatibility doesn't exist. - The problem arose from the press release of the Apache License-2.0, in which they gave "GPL compatibility" as a justification for the new license. Note that if you combine a GPL'd and an APL'd work, it's the GPL'd works license that is infringed, so the decision isn't up to the Apache group. The Apache guys might need a good clothes line.

From FSF's license list: The Apache Software License, version 2.0: This is a free software license but it is incompatible with the GPL. The Apache Software License is incompatible with the GPL because it has a specific requirement that is not in the GPL: it has certain patent termination cases that the GPL does not require. (We don't think those patent termination cases are inherently a bad idea, but nonetheless they are incompatible with the GNU GPL.)

The fork has already happened.

[mst76]

It appears to be pretty recent, and not yet advertised, but freedesktop.org has forked Xfree86 from 4.4 RC2. Note: this independent from their own experimental X server to which everybody is referring (but which is not really ready for consumption yet). If XFree86 doesn't revert to the old license, distributors are likely going to package the freedesktop fork. It remains to be seen if the major XFree86 developers will follow.

Re:RMS doesn't like it?

[Alan Cox]

Actually I think the unfortunate thing is that people have spent a year being pseudo-nice to each other instead of just forking the tree when Keith got kicked out. Thats probably done more harm than good.

The problem with the license is one of changes. You can't go around springing new licensing suprises on people without expecting them to be upset - whatever the license (as MS themselves have found ...)

Now its over everyone can back to work sanely and Dave Dawes can go and do his own thing in Dawes-space, or throw in the towel and contribute to the X.org tree. I still hope the latter because I don't think Dave Dawes did anything maliciously or without belieiving he was doing the right thing for X, he just seems to have been wrong.

Alan

Alan

Let's talk about something other than the licence

[osho_gg]

OK. Enough talking about licence changes. How about talking about the new release and what new exciting things it provides? I browsed through the entire release notes and could not find a single thing that will get me excited about trying out the new release. Nothing like, xrandr in 4.3 release or sub-pixel anti-aliased fonts in 4.1/4.2. In fact, nothing other than bug fixes that would benefit X for desktop user. I guess Keith Packard's absense is being felt in this release notes. Am I missing something that you noticed?

Some clarifications

[jaaron]

Did you read the most recent ASF position on this? The matter is due to a misunderstanding how patents work under the ASL versus how they work under the GPL. The matter will probably not be completely resolved until there is a better understanding of software patents and/or a court case involving patents and these open source license.

One important point: GPL-compatibility was not the only "justification for the new license" by a long shot. That was one of many goals, but not the main point of the license.

So, there has been progress on this issue, but it's not as clear cut as you make it out.