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Mandriva Businesses Software Linux

Mandrake Blocked By XFree86 4.4 License 647

Posted by simoniker from the dueling-legalese dept.
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."
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Mandrake Blocked By XFree86 4.4 License More

Mandrake Blocked By XFree86 4.4 License

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  • Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)

    by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @04:54PM (#8297553)
    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!

    • Re:Good for them (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gid13 ( 620803 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @04:57PM (#8297578)
      Too bad they didn't give freedesktop.org people a little more time to develop a viable alternative.

      But your point is well taken.

      • Re:Good for them (Score:5, Funny)

        by Jeremiah Cornelius ( 137 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:20PM (#8297813) Homepage Journal
        This is like a scene in "Animal House". Just transpose the location to the MIT cafeteria...

        Girl from Gamma Pi Lambda: "That boy is a 'B' 'S' 'D' 'PIG'!"

        Desko: "Try to see if you can get what I am now...
        (spits mountain of code onto everyone's hair and clothing.)
        I'm a patch-cluster! Get it?"

        Engineering Student: "LICENSE FIGGHHTT!!!!

        (All chaos ensues...)

    • Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)

      by quixoticsycophant ( 729112 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:32PM (#8298540)
      This could be a great opportunity.

      To the *nix users out there, have you ever considered that XFree86 ... sucks?

      Yes, it gets the job done. Yes, it's the most popular, it supports a plethora hardware, it is open source, etc. etc. But, all trolling aside, the thing does indeed suck.

      As a longtime linux user, I can say that every single linux machine I've had, including the current latest-and-greatest, has miserably failed my Window Drag Test(TM).

      To perform this test, start with a good web browser (firefox, mozilla, konqueror, galeon, whatever). Enable the equivalent of "Opaque Window Moving" on your window manager. Open a browser window and drag it to the bottom-left corner. Now drag it back. What happens? Open two windows. Drag one across the other. What happens?

      What happens is smearing. Gross. Ugly. Unacceptable. Call me picky, but I don't care how much hardware you support, or how popular you are, or whatever -- if your graphical system isn't good at *drawing graphics*, then it sucks.

      And this is what people notice when they first sit down in front of a linux machine. And it's killing us. Whatever the shortcomings of Windows and Macs, neither have this problem.

      So this licensing issue is good news, if it can galvanize the community to pull more resources into developing alternatives to XFree86 (because it sucks!).

      • Re:Good for them (Score:4, Funny)

        by JPriest ( 547211 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:39PM (#8298644) Homepage
        Nobody here will mod you up but I sure agree with you.

      • Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Haeleth ( 414428 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:53PM (#8298841) Journal
        Whatever the shortcomings of Windows and Macs, neither have this problem.

        Maybe not that one, but they have other similar problems. For example, boot up a Mac with OS X. Open a window. Now resize that window. Notice how beautifully swift and smooth that operation isn't?

        And on my Windows box, whenever I move a window it takes half a second to blank the thing and redraw it before beginning to drag. Although I suspect that one's something to do with my graphics drivers, as I haven't seen it on any other machines.

      • Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)

        by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:12PM (#8299051)
        Okay, test performed on Linux 2.6.1, XFree86 4.3.0 (NVIDIA binary drivers), with KDE CVS and Galeon. Machine is a P4 2.0 GHz.

        To perform this test, start with a good web browser (firefox, mozilla, konqueror, galeon, whatever). Enable the equivalent of "Opaque Window Moving" on your window manager. Open a browser window and drag it to the bottom-left corner. Now drag it back. What happens?
        --------
        The window moves?

        Open two windows. Drag one across the other. What happens?
        ---------
        The window moves again?

        What happens is smearing.
        ---------
        Except it doesn't?

        Gross. Ugly. Unacceptable.
        -------
        It would be, if it happened :)

        The problems you mention are not the fault of X. Its the fault of the applications. Your test *does* show some trailing in Mozilla. But KDE doesn't exhibit these problems, mainly because Qt rocks.

        • Re:Good for them (Score:5, Interesting)

          by TKinias ( 455818 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @08:39PM (#8299815)

          scripsit Be-Fan:

          Okay, test performed on Linux 2.6.1, XFree86 4.3.0 (NVIDIA binary drivers), with KDE CVS and Galeon. Machine is a P4 2.0 GHz.[...]

          Test performed with a 2.4 kernel on a stock Debian Sarge box (XF86 4.2.1). Hardware is 1999-vintage PIII/450 with ATI video. Result: Some slight smearing (maybe 0.2- or 0.3-sec lag) dragging Galeon windows over each other.

          The problems you mention are not the fault of X. Its the fault of the applications. Your test *does* show some trailing in Mozilla. But KDE doesn't exhibit these problems, mainly because Qt rocks.

          There's sense in that: I can drag as many xterms, gvim windows, xmms, etc., over each other as I want without a hint of smearing. Only Galeon shows any smearing.

          I'll refrain from commenting on the extent to which Qt `rocks', though ;)

        • Re:Good for them (Score:5, Interesting)

          by dicka_j ( 544356 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:51PM (#8300380) Homepage
          Ahhh, but the freedesktop X server does not have this problem as the windows are drawn to their own little bit of off-screen RAM and then composited onto each other, thus eliminating the need for application level redraws.

          It also means we now have the ability to do TRUE transparency. Soon we will be able to have a movie playing underneith an Xterm at 20% opacity! and finally anti-aliased edjes to our window manager skins :D

      • Re:Good for them (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jrockway ( 229604 ) * <jon-nospam@jrock.us> on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:30PM (#8299231) Homepage Journal
        Who cares? It works well enough. At least it's stable and works.

        Windows is no better. MacOS, yes. But is MacOS a Free operating system that runs on any piece-of-shit computer you throw at it? No.

        The way I look it is like this: you can fix it, or not use it. Pick one, and stop complaining. Is your post on topic, even? Does it have anything to do with the license? No. Hmm.

        BTW, it's fine on my GeForce 4 card. YMMV.

        • Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) * on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @01:46AM (#8302124)
          Okay, every time we talk about fixing it and proposing ideas, we get flamed out of existance. Keith Packard has been working on implementing those exact ideas, and some of us have been supporting his work for years (I have written HOWTOs and guides for using XRender/Xft and Fontconfig, and hacked on some FreeType rendering code over the years).


          It definitely doesn't help when every conversation about how to improve X and fix its major flaws devolves into a bunch of zealots proclaiming how perfect it is and that they see no performance issues that might VASTLY hinder adoption of X as a desktop windowing system. Not saying that you are such a zealot, but you could at least admit the flaws and stop taking it as some sort of personal affront against your honor.

      • Smearing (Score:5, Informative)

        by crucini ( 98210 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @02:48AM (#8302375)
        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.

        • Minor Correction (Score:5, Informative)

          by crucini ( 98210 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @03:13AM (#8302458)
          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.

      • Insightful? (Score:5, Funny)

        by vandan ( 151516 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @08:08AM (#8303430) Homepage

        As a longtime linux user, I can say that every single linux machine I've had, including the current latest-and-greatest, has miserably failed my Window Drag Test(TM).

        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.

        And this is what people notice when they first sit down in front of a linux machine. And it's killing us. Whatever the shortcomings of Windows and Macs, neither have this problem.

        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.

    • Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Shisha ( 145964 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:17PM (#8299108) Homepage
      What's even more important IMHO, is that if the community wants to redesign or do a major change in the graphics subsystem layer, it should be done NOW, before Linux desktop becomes widely used. Just look at the serial and parallel ports at the back of your computer. Once something is widely used it will probably outlive us.

      No really, XFree86 situation seems to be a mess at the moment, let's hope that interested parties (developers from KDE, GNOME, QT, Mandrake, RedHat, IBM etc.) will use it to reach a consensus on the whole desktop thing. It's now or never.

    • Re:Good for them (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Nailer ( 69468 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:05PM (#8300012)
      Told to me from one of the fdo guys:

      In two weeks the Freedesktop.org guys will release X11R6.7.

      The short term plan is to use the FDO Xlibs with the OSS XFree driver architecture. This will give compatibility with existing drivers (particularly the binary NVidia / ATI drivers) and many of the features of the fdo X server, apparently including compositing.

      Long term, though, there'll be a better driver model, and more communication between the guys writing your X server (fdo) and the vendors (one of the main beefs with XFree86 is that there wasn't much communication with vendors, who often waited up to a year for their drivers to get into XFree).

    • Re:Good for them (Score:5, Informative)

      by molnarcs ( 675885 ) <csabamolnar@gm a i l . com> on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:37PM (#8300258) Homepage Journal
      Well, I believe only good will come of this. I found this [freedesktop.org] link to a freedesktop.org discussion regarding the licecing changes following the discussion on the manrake list. The message is heart warming:
      Hi Donnie,

      We currently have no plans to ship XFree86 4.4.0 in the future.
      Red Hat is a strong supporter of open source software and
      technologies, and the new XFree86 license seems to be intended to
      restricting existing freedom for no real world technical or other
      gains. At least no gains that are beneficial to the community.

      Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation has expressed
      his concerns publically about the new XFree86 license and it's
      incompatibility with the GPL. Many others in the community
      object strongly to the new license as well.

      Branden Robinson of the Debian project has put together a list of
      license related issues contained in XFree86's source tree, and
      efforts are underway to remove code which is considered to be
      non-open source, or under too restrictive of license terms.

      Our current plan, is to use the freedesktop.org xlibs for the
      client side libraries. For the clients, utilities, X server, and
      other bits, we have not yet made a 100% solid decision, however
      a couple of alternatives are being explored. The details are
      not yet completely decided, however one thing that is decided, is
      that the XFree86 license version 1.1 is unacceptable.

      X11 has sorely lacked such an open and collaborative development
      environment for a very long time. It's now time for the open
      source community to unite and work together on solving this
      problem together, and give X11 permanently back to the community!

      I very much look forward to working together in collaboration
      with yourself, the Debian project, FreeBSD, Mandrake, SuSE, X.org
      foundation, the other BSDs, and any/all other interested parties
      on a true open source solution for the needs of X11 users and
      developers.

      Take care!
      TTYL

  • Enter the GNU (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jvmatthe ( 116058 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @04:55PM (#8297560) Homepage
    Many point out features of XF86 4.4 [an 'an open source X11-based desktop infrastructure'] they can't live without
    And what would RMS say? If you're willing to compromise for what you want at the price of freedom, well you've already lost. :^) Ah, the luxury of being a man of principle.

    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". ;^)

    • Re:Enter the GNU (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:01PM (#8297620)
      RMS would say that "XFree86 4.4" is an oxymoron, and that it should be called "XNotFree86 4.4". That way Mandrake is technically using the latest XFree86 version and everyone is happy in their respective Free/Non-Free worlds.

    • Re:Enter the GNU (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hexene ( 68121 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:10PM (#8297706) Homepage

      And what would RMS say? If you're willing to compromise for what you want at the price of freedom, well you've already lost. :^) Ah, the luxury of being a man of principle.

      Just to point out, the new XFree86 licence is not "non-free". The issue is that in the eyes of many (including, almost certainly, the FSF) it is not compatible with the GPL.

    • The X Windows Trap (Score:5, Interesting)

      by amightywind ( 691887 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:13PM (#8297740) Journal

      I think Stallman would remind he foresaw this situation many years ago:

      The X Windows Trap [fsf.org]

      If people like you weren't so busy misrepresenting his views you'd see that.

  • Why does Mandrake have a problem with this? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dankney ( 631226 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @04:57PM (#8297577) Homepage
    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?

    • Re:Why does Mandrake have a problem with this? (Score:5, Informative)

      by rsidd ( 6328 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:03PM (#8297638)
      Didn't you follow the link? For those who didn't: (1) Including the new text in every place it "should" go is a lot of work, for so late in the release cycle; (2) the new XFree86 licence is likely not GPL-compatible, which causes huge problems for all distributors, not just Mandrake.

      • Also... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:17PM (#8297781)
        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.

        • Re:Also... // VIA driver for 4.3 (Score:5, Informative)

          by Alan Cox ( 27532 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @08:24PM (#8299684) Homepage
          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.

    • Re:Why does Mandrake have a problem with this? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Namaseit ( 668654 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:05PM (#8297656)
      Read the license again! There is a no advertising without written permission clause. This is incompatible with the GPL *and* the amount of work it would take to get written consent from *every* developer to put "has XFree86 4.4" on a box or on a webpage is so much a pain in the ass it's quite insane that they even added that clause.

      • Re:Why does Mandrake have a problem with this? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Dr. Blue ( 63477 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:26PM (#8297868)
        There is a no advertising without written permission clause.

        I don't get that out of the license at all. What I read is that you can't use the name "The XFree86 Project, Inc." in any advertising -- why is that a big deal?

        I also don't see the problems with the rest of the license points highlighted in the mailing list exchange. Looks like if you put their copyright notice in /usr/share/doc/XFree86 or whatever you'd be in compliance.

        Now the generation of yet another licensing scheme for open source software does confuse things unnecessarily, but I don't see any concrete problems with the license....

  • And what would be the Problem? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kwandar ( 733439 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @04:58PM (#8297587)

    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?

  • Time to find an alternative. (Score:5, Informative)

    by jsrlepage ( 696948 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @04:58PM (#8297588) Homepage
    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.

    • Re:Time to find an alternative. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stwrtpj ( 518864 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:37PM (#8298617) Journal
      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.

      You raise an excellent point, but we have to remember that any new implementation of X11 is going to have to allow all the existing drivers to work with it. Otherwise we face a lot of things like this: "Uh, hello, NVidia? Remember how we whined to you to make drivers for XFree86? Well forget that, now we need you to do it all over again for this new implementation."

      Yes, in the perfect world, all graphic card specs would be open and anyone could write a driver for them. But it is not likely going to happen anytime soon, and to abandon all the work that companies who have not opened the specs but have graciously chosen to give us drivers is throwing the baby out with the bathwater (and I'm not implying that you're saying this, but it is something that might follow from an attempt to rewrite everything from scratch).

      I am aware that this attitude flies in the face of free software purists. Much as I respect RMS and his position, I prefer to meet somewhere in the middle.

  • GPL compatibility (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:00PM (#8297605)
    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 [about.com]

  • Not to spell doom... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hermeshome.se ( 233303 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:00PM (#8297610) Homepage
    ...to XFree86 but I don't see them making any new friends by doing this kind of thing. As soon as [freedesktop.org]
    alternatives are more mature, XFree86 will feel the heat.

    And as for the Free in XFree86... Hmm..

  • Wither X? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MrChuck ( 14227 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:00PM (#8297612)
    Grrrr. I've used X for 12 years now, regularly. It was *ok* on a Sun 3, if you opened a window and waited a while. It's gotten better.

    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.

    • Re:Wither X? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ratboy666 ( 104074 ) <<moc.liamtoh> <ta> <legiew_derf>> on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:20PM (#8297811) Journal
      X is *just* the network drawing stuff. There has been no need to change that...

      X *does* have the ability to support multiple servers, and each server can support multiple screens. Pretty much has *always* had this ability.

      The ability to "snapshot" has very little to do with X. The server could certainly snapshot and forward. In fact, it is remarkably EASY to do with X. Except -- (and there seems to always be an "EXCEPT") when your alternate server is running a different pixel depth... Like, you launch your application on a true-colour display, and then bring it back on a monochrome (1-bit) display.
      Even that has a solution. Anyway -- the other "common" display systems (MAC and Windows) don't have a solution (unless going through something like VNC).

      Development hasn't stopped -- but the "main-line" of the X server *is* frozen. Development occurs on the fringes (new extensions), and with new drivers.

      Ratboy

    • Re:Wither X? (Score:5, Funny)

      by LittleLebowskiUrbanA ( 619114 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:28PM (#8297893) Homepage Journal
      Wait a minute. So what do all do I get out of killing a chicken at the full moon? If there's smooth sleep/resume involved, chickens watch out!

    • Re:Wither X? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ChaosDiscord ( 4913 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:54PM (#8298173) Homepage Journal

      Your core confusion comes from confusing what X Windows is, possibly as a result of using Microsoft Windows. Windows does a great deal to blur the lines between the graphics display layer and the widgets on top.

      X Windows is (to simplify a bit) just a way to display bits on screen. Exactly what you display is left as a problem for the next layer up. This might seem odd, but it has great benefits. This means that the user interface layer (often Gnome or KDE these days) can engage in rapid change and development while the base layer (X) can sit nice and stable. Conversely, because particular widget sets and other user interface details aren't embedded into the graphics system I can pick from competing [xig.com] offerings [xfree86.org].

      XFree86 is mostly stable because it works fine. There have been some important developments recently (XRender, XRandR, XVideo), but on the whole we've got what we need. The user visible improvements should take place on a higher level (Gnome, KDE, etc). Those higher levels can take advantage of the stable base X provides. All that's needed are regular driver updates for new hardware as it comes out (and bug fixes as bugs become known). The X Windows standard itself is gloriously stable. It works fine, additional functionality can be (and is) provided through extensions. That stability is key to allowing higher levels in the system to experiment.

      The features you want sound like great ideas (although I notice that Microsoft Windows and MacOS doesn't support the snapshot and migration functionality you want either). But they're ideas for different layers. Complaining that X should provide them is like complaining that your dashboard should provide better traction.

    • Re:Wither X? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:40PM (#8298657)
      Stuff is racing forward at freedesktop.org. They are planning (and already have a lot of code for):

      - A fully double-buffered window system
      - Vector graphics library (Cairo)
      - Fully accelerated drawing via OpenGL
      - X-independent OpenGL subsystem

      Those features would put X ahead of MacOS X (as it is now) and on a par with Longhorn. And they've made real progress so far --- you can download the FD.O X server today and see the first two features in action.

      • Re:Wither X? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by diamondsw ( 685967 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @08:43PM (#8299848)
        And what exactly about that is ahead of Mac OS X, as it stands now? I certainly know that 1 and 2 have been there since 10.0, and 3 was added in 10.2. Number 4, I'm not sure what you mean? You could certainly say that OpenGL in Mac OS X is independent of X, since X is an optional install.

        So, in a nutshell you're saying that X-Windows might at some point enjoy the features Mac OS X had in last year's Jaguar release. And that's hoping all of the higher layers cooperate smoothly and things like anti-aliasing are completely sorted out, once and for all.

        I'll look forward to that being done. Then maybe we can examine what's needed for copy and paste to work,,,

        (Yeah, this is trolling. So is most of /.)

    • Re:Wither X? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Alan Cox ( 27532 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:25PM (#8300143) Homepage
      XKeith86 has definitely moved forward. XFree is a bit stuck, and everyone who tries to improve it seems to get fired from XFree86 cvs on the spot

      As to performance, a lot of the current problems seems to be that
      a) The toolkits use Xrender heavily
      b) The Xserver render acceleration handling isn't very bright
      c) The only bits of code that do accelerate Xrender in XFree86 don't accelerate anything but overlay with alpha, so solid drawing which could easily be accelerated isnt handled.

      The more "oh god I want to cry" level XFree86 problems start when you hotplug video cards.

  • XFree86 is a licensing mess. (Score:5, Informative)

    by breser ( 16790 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:00PM (#8297614) Homepage
    It's become clear after Branden Robinson did an audit of licensing in XFree86 that there are problems even outside of this license change.

    You can read his analysis on a thread on debian-legal [debian.org].

    There's also been extensive discussion [debian.org] of the new license on debian-legal. The discussion carries over from Jan into February too. [debian.org]

  • Perhaps I'm Missing Something... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bobdoer ( 727516 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:01PM (#8297616) Homepage Journal
    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.

    • Re:Perhaps I'm Missing Something... (Score:4, Informative)

      by alexborges ( 313924 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:05PM (#8297664)
      Okay... this, is an 'OLD' BSD style licence clause. It conflicts with the GPL and thus, people wanting to put GPL software in XFree86 wont be able to.

      Thats the big deal.

      I, for one, dont give a fuck.

      • Re:Perhaps I'm Missing Something... (Score:5, Informative)

        by RML ( 135014 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:27PM (#8297885)
        Okay... this, is an 'OLD' BSD style licence clause.

        Not quite, but it has similar problems.

        It conflicts with the GPL and thus, people wanting to put GPL software in XFree86 wont be able to.

        Or, more to the point, people wanting to use XFree86 libraries in GPL software. That is a problem.

  • meanwhile (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:04PM (#8297649)
    Debian is expected to run into this problem in 2038. Way to go Branden.

  • Mandrake isn't the only one (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:07PM (#8297676)
    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.

    • The Glory Days of X (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jonabbey ( 2498 ) * <jonabbey@ganymeta.org> on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:22PM (#8297832) Homepage
      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.

  • Loud and clear.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by botzi ( 673768 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:09PM (#8297699)
    Another problem is more social in nature, this license, the quibling between XFree86 developers (the core team mess) and the lack of social finesse of David Dawes don't really appeal for close cooperation.

    ...and it's really sad when this happens with an Open Source project. "Quibling" over a product of their cooperation. No winners there.

  • Those features I can't live without (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FattMattP ( 86246 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:18PM (#8297797) Homepage
    Many point out features of XF86 4.4 [an 'an open source X11-based desktop infrastructure'] they can't live without
    They lived without them before 4.4. What's so special about these features?

  • Removing Japanese fonts as well? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by offpath3 ( 604739 ) <.offpath4. .at. .yahoo.co.jp.> on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:23PM (#8297839)
    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 xlibs, xserver (Score:5, Interesting)

    by calc ( 1463 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:25PM (#8297856)
    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

  • Incompatibility. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by s4m7 ( 519684 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:32PM (#8297914) Homepage

    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!

    • Re:Incompatibility. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Alan Shutko ( 5101 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:22PM (#8298463) Homepage
      Please. X is one of the most painful packages to download and compile oneself. It's big. It needs lots of space to compile. It needs lots of time to compile. It's not just ./configure && make && make install, since it's got a moderately Byzantine build system based on Imakefiles, which nearly nobody else uses anymore, so if you have to change build parameters, you have a bit more work/learning to do.

      In short, after having kept an XF86 build tree around to stay on the bleeding edge, it's enough of a pain even after you get it going that I don't want to do it again unless I really have to.

    • Re:Incompatibility. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:35PM (#8299287) Homepage
      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.

      You really don't get it, do you? The problem isn't that I have to "include an extra copyright notice in your documentation". And it doesn't matter that the XFree licence says you can link with GPL code, it's the GPL that says you can't link with the new XFree code. If I want to use XFree libs, I can't use any GPL code made by anybody else, since I can't provide an exception to the licence.

      I would have to track down each and every one of them. Even if none of them have a problem with it, it'd still be a bitch. And if some of them are like RMS and refuse, it's hopeless. They could be a small minority of a library, but it would still make it impossible to use the whole library.

      And you may consider this trivial, but the fact is that without a valid licence, however how small the incompatibilities may seem, this would be a breach of copyright law, which is a serious offense. So RMS may be concerned about the principal sides, but everyone else is concerned with the practical side.

      What would you do, have thousands of authors change their licence in order to achive something which is a) extremely minor b) potentially principally questionable (I don't feel that way, some might) and c) extremely wide-scale (every copyright header would have to be updated)? XFree is shooting themselves in the foot, both barrels.

      Kjella

  • What's in 4.4? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Alan ( 347 ) <arcterex@NOspAm.ufies.org> on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:33PM (#8297931) Homepage
    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?

  • This is what I love about linux (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FictionPimp ( 712802 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:34PM (#8297933) Homepage
    This is what I love about linux. If you dont like the way something is done, do it yourself or find another way. The linux distro's are learning they dont need to be locked into anything. They can do what they want (with-in the limits of the GPL) This is a good thing.

    I dont see whats the big deal, issues like this can create new tech, and spark new creative ideas in the community.

  • They are NOT blocked, unless they want to be. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rex Code ( 712912 ) <rexcode@gmail.com> on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:42PM (#8298018)
    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.

    • Re:They are NOT blocked, unless they want to be. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pyros ( 61399 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:31PM (#8298532) Journal
      The next release of Fedora Core, due in just over a month, won't have XFree 4.4 either. Given the dicussion on the debian-legal team, it sounds like Debian won't package XFree 4.4 as well. So it sounds like the major players are all rejecting XFree over the license, which leads me to believe this isn't just smoke. Red Hat is actually well known for pissing of its users by being strict about GPL compliance (no MP3, no NTFS, I think also no more pine, and now no UW-IMAP).

      At the very least, the ongoing Debian packaging of 4.3 is apparently partially delayed by efforst to keep things prepared for a switch to the freedesktop.org stuff, so at least one major player already has a framework in place to ditch xfree86.

  • xfree86 digging its grave (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oohp ( 657224 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:46PM (#8298062) Homepage
    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.

  • You have to Wonder (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ortcutt ( 711694 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:57PM (#8298214)
    You really have to wonder about the judgement of the XFree86 team. The justification of the change was the following
    The purpose of these changes is to strengthen the "except claim you wrote it" clause of the Project's licensing philosophy regarding binary distributions of XFree86. While the original license covered this adequately for source code redistribution, it has always been lacking where binary redistribution was concerned.
    First, I don't understand what problem they take themselves to be remedying. Does anyone really think that if Redhat and Mandrake didn't put the notice in their documentation, that anyone would think that they had written the code. I mean that would be really amazing, if both Redhat and Mandrake and all of the other distributions had all each written XFree86. I think the XFree86 people aren't correctly understanding their own principle. It says "you can do anything you want, except claim you wrote it". When someone distibutes binary software, that is not a claim, explicit or implicit, that they wrote the software. However, instead of seeing that the advertising clause does not even fit their stated principle, they go on to make it more odious by requiring all distributors to get permission from XFree86 to use the name XFree86 outside of the notice required by the licence agreement. The text of the licence is as follows:
    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.
    This will likely have two effects. Distributions may decide that it isn't worth their while, and they simply won't promote their products as containing Xfree86, even if they do include XFree86 4.4. Or, they may decide, as Mandrake has done, that XFree86 4.3 is good enough for them and they can wait for freedesktop.org to mature. In either case, I don't see what XFree86 has gained, even relative to their stated goal, since in the first case, they miss out on the free publicity, in the second, their new license doesn't have any effect because it simply turned users away.

    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.

    • Re:You have to Wonder (Score:4, Informative)

      by plcurechax ( 247883 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:31PM (#8298528) Homepage
      Does anyone really think that if Redhat and Mandrake didn't put the notice in their documentation, that anyone would think that they had written the code.

      Actually XFree86 is increasely being used in embedded systems, where it may not be obvious that it is running XFree86 on an ARM processor or whatever.

  • OpenBSD not accepting License change either (Score:5, Informative)

    by mcroot ( 634911 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:00PM (#8298245)
    From: Theo de Raadt <deraadt@cvs.openbsd.org>

    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

  • What about a fork? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:19PM (#8298428) Homepage
    Can't someone fork the 4.3 version and just continue to use the old license?

    • Re:What about a fork? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:42PM (#8299342)
      Why bother forking 4.3.x, when you can fork 4.4.0 RC2?

      From xfree86.org (emphasis added): "The XFree86 Project, Inc is announcing that it has made a change to its license effective with the Third Release Candidate for the 4.4.0 series."

      Did somebody say loophole?

  • OpenBSD, too (Score:5, Informative)

    by chrysalis ( 50680 ) * on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:52PM (#8298819) Homepage
    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.

  • Project competition (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CalCudahy ( 541967 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:15PM (#8299088) Homepage
    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.

  • Gentoo's doing the same (Score:5, Informative)

    by keesh ( 202812 ) * on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:26PM (#8299190) Homepage
    Gentoo aren't including any new xfree releases (>4.3.99.902) until the licence is sorted out.

  • possible interim solution: the server (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xtifr ( 1323 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:30PM (#8299228) Homepage
    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.

    • Re:possible interim solution: the server (Score:5, Informative)

      by Alan Cox ( 27532 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:34PM (#8300223) Homepage
      I specifically asked Dave about this when the change first came up and he wasn't interested in keeping the library bits clean. Had he done that the only problem would have been Alan Hourihane's GPL'd X drivers for VNC.

      Its also a stupid way to get credit. Repeat after me "Nobody reads the documentation anyway". Right ? They've have done far better with the old license and something like a cute XFree86 logo spinning across the display when the server started - aka the 3dfx glide library startup.

      As for the server side - Freedesktop needs to work on the server side for all the cool new technologies like on the fly rotation that XFree86 convservatism won't experiment with (rightfully or wrongfully). Keith's server is neat but its definitely 'technology preview' grade at the moment. I'm running it on one box and the semi transparent menus and drop shadows are nice.

  • I think its time (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Cyno ( 85911 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:58PM (#8299485) Journal
    to create a GPL alternative to XFree86.

    If you want something done right you got to do it yourself.

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