Slashdot Mirror
Fedora Prepares For Xorg Instead of XFree86
ZuperDee writes "I noticed in the development branch of Fedora today that they appear to be in the process of creating new xorg RPMs, and from the looks of the changelogs in those RPMs, it looks like their ultimate plan is to switch from XFree86 to the XOrg Foundation's implementation of X11. Anyone else here think this could signal the beginning of a new trend in Linux distributions, and that XOrg could end up becoming the new de-facto X11 implementation?" (See this earlier story,too.)
Just when Linux was getting to the point where it could overtake Windows, even in the desktop (www.mandrake.com) environment, XFree86 changes its license. Now, Fedora is switching its Graphical Display. No matter the security, the stability, etc. the average home user will probably remain with windows. He wants his program to be work with his computer. It may not be that simple once more distro's use more widely varied XFree86 implementations
http://www.beyourowneviloverlord.tk
http://www.frozenchickenthrowing.tk
http://www.killercamel.tk
Is this the same thing as Xouvert, or something new?
Can someone give a ten second summary of the differences in the goals and developers of XFree86, Xouvert and Xorg?
That is what I am wondering as well. Supposedly, if their drivers are built to the X11 spec, then I would think they would be easy to port over without much trouble. If, however they have all kinds of hooks into XFree86 specific libraries, then there might be problems.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Fedora switching just means we have more choice. This is a good thing, just like KDE vs. Gnome is a good thing.
Most people will settle for whatever comes with their distro, so maybe this will give an impetus for the X group to clean up the licensing issue :-)
While I don't think the X world will turn on its ear just because Fedora may start using Xorg, I think the fact that one or more distributions are currently/going-to try it out is A Good Thing(tm).
Both NVidia and ATI keep their driver sources and hardware-level programming information closely guarded secrets. This means unless NVidia and ATI decide to support the new X server, we're gonna be stuck with lousy 2-d drivers, maybe with accelerated blitting if the mfgrs decide to throw us a few crumbs.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
It's X, X is for the most part X whichever X you run. If feature y on server z of X doesn't make it the standard, what make anyone think license clause w for server v will?
Having two equally used Xes would be better I'd think, after all they follow the same X standard.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
XOrg could end up becoming the new de-facto X11 implementation
It's a little early to make that kind of prediction. However, the key is compatibility. If XORG maintains full compatibility such that it's still X11 and we can just a recompile and go on our merry way, then anything is possible. Personally, I don't think people care which code base their X server uses so long as it's an X11 server. Reality is that the XF86 group will wake up an smell the coffee sooner rather than later, they're expendable, they just don't know it yet.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Also, there has been some internal strife with the XFree86 organization. From my external viewpoint, it seems like the people own largely control the organization are somewhat slow about changing things or adopting new ideas into XFree86.
XFree86, up to this point, has been a defining implementation of the X11 protocol. Most new things in the X11 protocol have come from the XFree86 project. But, I suspect that's no longer going to be the case.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I don't see why. Isn't it possible to find out what hooks they have and then port the old XFree86 code over? Or would the DMCA prevent us from finding out what hooks are called?
I guess that is why MS and others are still replicating one of X' most important features, being usable over a network to provide a remote desktop. Don't get me wrong, it is definitely time to kick out some outdated stuff or at least bring in replacement for many of the things X does when used locally, but generally X is very usefull and there is no reason to throw that away.
What WILL it take to wake them up?
Furthermore, should we care any more? With XOrg, xserver and xouvert all at different and useful stages of maturity, and apparently enough developers now working on each to guarantee that they won't stagnate too soon, XF86 is looking increasingly irrelevant.
Funny, but it seems that really don't need bad reviews, freezes, or crashes to end the life of your software project. All you need it a sucky license.
As I understand it, Xfree changed their license to make sure more credit is given to its developers. But who gives a crap when no one will use because of the license itself.
The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers
There's nothing wrong with having hundreds of forks - usually it's pretty clear which one you want to go with.
A fork started over a minor difference of opinion is unlikely to get much backing...and it's existance does not really affect the main project.
The main difference between Free Software and Proprietry projects is that when a bunch of developers decide they don't like the way a proprietry project is being run - they either leave for good, or leave and start from scratch, with Free Software they can fork the project and carry on from the point they left off.
Yes forking can hurt an existing project if a large number of developers leave, but the alternative is that they leave and don't fork.
Advanced users are users too!
I think that this is silly if it's for Licensing reasons alone. I predict that more and more people who actually make a living making Open Source software are going to move away from the GPL and it's permutations, for Open Source licenses that actually make sense, that are not based on RMS's gigantic ego.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Funny? Mod parent insightful! This is closer to the truth than most realise.
As much is it one of the great pluses of the Open Source movement to be able to branch like this, in reality, it's another truckload of headaches for compatilibity issues in the future. The X server has been one of the only invariables recently in the layering of our systems; now we have just witnessed another variable which doubles the possible combinations (read: problems) from the X server layer up. For those of us who want linux on the desktop (read: useable by noobs), this spells ever more woe. Ah well, at least sysadm salaries might increase out of this one.
My two cents.
- Oisin
PGP KeyId: 0x08D63965
this is a fork so it should be compatible
At some level, all distros are forks, so they're all compatible, right? My worry is they'll put some wierd X extension in it, and then make GNOME require that extension.
Anyway, what was the big deal with the XFree86 license again? Buncha massive overreaction if you ask me, but I think certain groups were looking for any excuse to hijack XFree86.
Ther is at least an option in the X marketplace, uptill now (or whenever) there was no option to Xfree86 for all unix based distro's.Now with the xfree86 messing up the license theres some hope for a Mandrake and his buddies, don't you think? ;-)
Lord of the Binges.
I think this thread proves that freedesktop.org need to hire a marketing director.
(yes, I know that X is hardly Linux-specific...)
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
I think they need to come up with a name for their damn X server. Up until now, calling it the FD.O X server was okay, cuz there was only one X server on freedesktop.org. Now there are two, and all hell has broken loose. It doesn't help that the new X server is called the X.org server, when there is already another X.org server (the X11R6.6 reference implementation).
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I think they'll follow whoever the biggest commercial Linux distros, and today that means RedHat and Novell/SuSE.
Why support XFree86 if the big distros are dropping it?
I good explanation for it that I read at osnews.com was that the XFree86 and the Distros (commercial and community alike) started to increasingly have differences in priorities and culture. The license change was a like message from XFree86 to the distros that they didn't care one way or another for their support. The distros response is logical. Additionally while most of the distros have pleny of software incompatible with the GPL, it is not ideal to have something as central to an operating system as the X server to be GPL-incompatible.
If it doesn't have accelerated support for video card X (and forking the tree will have that effect as development resources get divided), I don't care how open it is.
Does is matter how far you can open the hood of the car? I'd rather be able to open it three quarters of the way open to see a nice eight cylinder 450 than to be able to open it compeletely and see the hamster and his wheel.
Agile Artisans
For the user, OSX it is a dream. But for developers, it's a wet dream. Creating slick interfaces is simple, the PDF-inspired graphical model is a breath of fresh air, and the interfaces inherit impressive functionality automatically. Because its code-development process leverages effort powerfully, perhaps more so than for the comparable GNOME/KDE tools, I think OSX offers good potential for the open-source movement, given well-fashioned attitudes and licenses.
I make these remarks with some trepidation, since I think the fragmentation across GNOME and KDE dilutes developer momentum. Also, I make these remarks to evoke discussion by those more technically-aware than myself.
I am thinking, and I can't see your reasons, could you please elaborate?
If you're going to state that X11 is slow, then I suggest that you rmember that on a local box, we're talking about unix sockets, which are mmaped in the kernel, hence 0 performance loss.
If your going to start asking about alpha blending etc then your confusing X11 and XFree, since their is no problem with haveing a blendable X server.
Please elaborate
Ask 8 slackers a question, get 10 awnsers (a citation, but I can't remember from who)
...the folly of relying on binary-only drivers.
Please refrain from using overly simplistic arguments to support your cause. In my opinion, it wasn't JUST the license change that lead to this seemingly spiralling downfall, but the head developers of XFree86 itself (David Dawes, to be specific).
/.) and the man strikes me as positively arrogant, with no respect for the opinions of others (unless he was actually majorly outnumbered, and sometimes not even then). He has repeatedly ignored input from other people including his own co-developers and loves to portray himself as the righteous leader. His posts are nothing short of antagonistic and he has very selective memory.
I've read and re-read various threads on the XFree86 mailing list (please look it up in archives and past posts on
Would that be sufficient reason for a project to fail? In this case, I would say so. He insists on having and keeping all control of the project to himself. If he had good sense, that wouldn't be a problem, but he's already shown that all he's interested in is recognition and retaining control over the project (rather than the project's welfare).
Past posts have shown that several suggestions and patches had been ignored which led to the project's stagnation. You may argue that the project is successful and works even now, but the point is it could have been so much better under a different type of leadership.
The recent license change is but one manifestation of how callous the head developers are.
I can't see what you want me to think about. You've presented an assertion but provided no reasoning. If you could elaborate: why is X11 an obstacle to the desktop?
What have you done for Free Software?
I'm the maintainer of CSCVS, a tool for breaking CVS repositories into changesets, reporting on them, and importing those changsets into TLA. As such, my familiarity with CVS (and Arch) goes beyond that of the average user.
Now, about the issues that Arch is designed to fix: Revisioning renames and moves is not something that comes up only infrequently. Revisioning metadata is not something that comes up only infrequently. Mutually merged branches are not something that come up only infrequently. Taking forever to do a "cvs update" on a 10,000 file tree because the tree needs to be walked to look for updates is not something that comes up only infrequently. I've had the lead developer at work bitching in my direction because CVS is coming up with spurious conflicts that Arch would ignore.
I have a leg to stand on right now, and if you'd care to stand up and try to argue your position on its merits rather than firing off some angry rant, I'd absolutely love to do so.
Hmmm, let's review a little history here...
For some time now, I have been able to login to a Solaris box from a Linux box, start an Xterm on one and display it on the other. *Gasp* Interoperability! And these don't even have much common history (except, of course, the Solaris distros that use XFree86, before some pedant points it out). And you know what, the exact same thing works with Tru64 Unix... and NT X servers... gosh, just about the whole X11 world is interoperable! Conspiracy theorists, arise!
And these are only the ones that I've actually tried.
As for driver compatibility, do you expect Linux kernel drivers to work on BSD? Do you expect Dia plugins to work in OO.o? Of course not. They are parts of different projects. Saying this is going to confuse Joe User is ridiculous. What, one day Joe User just decides to download the source to an XFree86 video driver and compile it, and finds it doesn't work in his FD.O X server... I'm not seeing a realistic scenario here. As if some clueless user who can't tell the difference between a BMW and a Peugeot might try to install a BMW engine in his Mercedes...
Think before you post. I do it and, believe it or not, this post actually got a lot nicer to you after doing so.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
> Perhaps now XFree86 decided to go GPL-incompatible, some even say
> non-practical even while free, it would be time to go LGPL or
> even GPL? Thus proprietary vendors would have to either stick
> with XFree86 and its advertising clause, or pay and thus help
> develop (X.org|XOuvert|FreeDesktopX).
Proprietary vendors and the *BSDs would prefer the advertising clause.
In the case of proprietary companies; why pay/help for another
implementation with a more illiberal license?
And for *BSD; why change all the dependencies for BSD ports that
currently depend on XFree to instead depend on a different X server
with a different license? After all most *BSDers are pretty much
license agnostic and don't like unneccessary work.
BTW/FWIW, I've seen no discussion about the Xfree license change on
the primary FreeBSD newsgroup. I don't think it's anything we lose
any sleep over, it's not in the base system so it doesn't really matter.
If the functionality of the differing X servers changed to any
degree, then folks would jump on the more featureful
What the posts here seem to indicate is that Linux users seem to
think most of the time that they are the only people who use
X/XFree, they're not! They're the only ones who go through
prolonged & tortured discussions about the licensing of it.
The Machine stops.
Nope, because the licence change was done just before 4.4 final, at the release candidate stage, so the fork contains the most recent code just before the licence change took place.
A small lisence problem will not stop Linux, simply strip out XF86, replace it with something else and the problem is solved. In fact, the OS may benifit from a new X implimentation.
I don't have time to comment my code, the program is late already.
it would be a nice demonstration of the claim that opensource software can adapt quickly to 'breaks' in incompatable licenses (and unwanted behaviour).
Lets see how flawless this comes off -- will it cause confusion or can RedHat (the leading distro) make the change, leaving others, will it 'fork' and provide two distinct servers or will One Fail?
Should be interesting to watch.
As long as people are running with X11R6 servers, they will want new apps compiled against Y-windows or whatever to run. Does the planned X11R6 compatability layer work both ways?
...) On the other hand, I've seen glitzier programs (emacs, even Mozilla) perform just fine through the same network. But I can see room for improvement. VNC seems to be faster in some ways. And Microsoft has some technology that does a similar thing fairly quickly, but that's relying on a higher-level protocol passing Windows API calls or something. So that's what you mean about integrating the widgets and toolkits somehow.
I think the optional extensions are great -- this allows for multiple implementations of X without an unbearable burden of supporting *everything*. If the process of natural selection is going to work, you want a protocol that's not overly demanding.
By separating the widgets and toolkits from the X server, you again reduce complexity and allow for multiple implementations at these different layers. I guess the widgets and themes could somehow be linked into the X server, but now I'm rapidly entering the realm of speculation.
I keep hearing the argument that X is bad because it's old. Unix is even older, and look what happened with it! I'm not saying you're wrong, I just want to hear about the details. Is it necessarily true that the entire protocol is insufficient and cannot be satisfactorily extended? Why not?
I guess efficiency could be the main issue. In part it's a matter of how the clients are designed. I've seen some relatively simple (just stock widgets) Java programs that, with Sun's VM, absolutely crawl over a 10 MBit connection. I mean that it takes half a minute to redraw a quarter of a window or pop up a menu. Compression seems not to help much because it's all limited by latency. (I can imagine the communique: "Can I draw this pixel here?" "What color?" "Red." "Okay." "You sure?" "pretty sure."
Get a whole bunch of Linux advocates in a room together with a bunch of BSD advocates. Casually mention licensing. Shortly before all hell breaks loose, one or two people will mention that Linux has not forked because it's under the GPL, while laissez-faire BSD has at least a dozen forks in it. Whereupon Alan will hit Theo over the head with a copy of the GNU Manifesto, rendering him unconscious.
Forking has happened with linux. In fact, linux comes pre-forked. Truly bleeding edge early adopters only use kernels with AC patches, don't they? And don't a lot of people use RedHat's kernels, which are usually older kernels with patches back-ported. Sounds forky to me.
Now, because of the GPL nature of derivative kernels, kernel patches often make their way into the mainstream Linux(R) kernel in due time, as with most journalling filesystems for example, but that doesn't necessarily happen; so people who adopted early to some bleeding edge feature that never got into the mainstream kernel need to keep on patching. That's a fork, baby.
In reality, which fork you use depends on to whom you swear allegiance; RedHat, Linus, TheoDeRaadt, etc.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty