jschauma writes "It appears that, unlike many other Open Source projects, NetBSD did not find any serious problems
with the much-debated license change of XFree86 4.4.0: it was just imported
into the tree."
Re:Explain
by
Via_Patrino
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I don't know very well since it (what's covered or not) changes all the time, the major problem is with linking.
With the new version you can't make link to GPL programs using Xfree86 As most of the programs (even on *BSD projects) are GPL you can't not run them (I think an exception is when you compile yourself). I'm not sure that problem was resolved.
The other problem is with code reutilization. A lot of people don't want to contribute to a project where code won't be possible to be used in other projects that use GPL (don't know about BSD) because they're incompatible licenses.
Ok, you usually hold copyright for your own code, but, in a project, code often mix so much with other people code. And you don't just code: you debug, test and improve existing code.
Those people aren't interested in making that effort to a code that will be just used by projects (compatible) with that license.
the XFree86 libraries are NOT under this new license.
Sure, Xlib isn't under the new XFree86 license, but some of the other client libraries such as the one for XRender support are, which makes XRender of XFree86 4.4 incompatible with GPL apps.
FreeBSD
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Informative
According to a FreeBSD-x11 thread, XFree86 4.4.0 will definitely be integrated to FreeBSD's ports collection too.
It looks like the license is only a problem for some Linux distros and Theo.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know very well since it (what's covered or not) changes all the time, the major problem is with linking.
With the new version you can't make link to GPL programs using Xfree86 As most of the programs (even on *BSD projects) are GPL you can't not run them (I think an exception is when you compile yourself). I'm not sure that problem was resolved.
The other problem is with code reutilization. A lot of people don't want to contribute to a project where code won't be possible to be used in other projects that use GPL (don't know about BSD) because they're incompatible licenses.
Ok, you usually hold copyright for your own code, but, in a project, code often mix so much with other people code. And you don't just code: you debug, test and improve existing code.
Those people aren't interested in making that effort to a code that will be just used by projects (compatible) with that license.
the XFree86 libraries are NOT under this new license.
Sure, Xlib isn't under the new XFree86 license, but some of the other client libraries such as the one for XRender support are, which makes XRender of XFree86 4.4 incompatible with GPL apps.
According to a FreeBSD-x11 thread, XFree86 4.4.0 will definitely be integrated to FreeBSD's ports collection too.
It looks like the license is only a problem for some Linux distros and Theo.