[wplug] Is XFree86 4.4 worth it?

[Vanco, Don]

Look at me!  Reporting on OpenBSD!  

Not really.  Pretty harsh words below - but RH has made a statment that they
too are "investigating" and will likely not support anything non-GPL.

 

 

----- Forwarded message from Theo de Raadt <deraadt at cvs.openbsd.org> -----

From: Theo de Raadt <deraadt at cvs.openbsd.org>

Subject: XFree86 license

To: misc at openbsd.org

Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 14:27:47 -0700

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.

----- End forwarded message -----

 

 

-----Original Message----- 
From: wplug-admin at wplug.org on behalf of Jonathan S Billings 
Sent: Mon 3/1/2004 10:25 AM 
To: wplug at wplug.org 
Cc: 
Subject: Re: [wplug] Is XFree86 4.4 worth it?



I know I've heard that RMS has declared that the new XFree86 license is
not GPL compatible, and that the debian folks are looking into it.  I
haven't read it, since most license politics gives me a headache. 

I know that this release will be very useful to me, since I support a
couple systems that have the Intel 845 chipset, which is kind of broken
in 4.3.  Most of the changes I see (listed here:
http://www.xfree86.org/4.4.0/RELNOTES2.html#2
<http://www.xfree86.org/4.4.0/RELNOTES2.html#2> ) aren't features that the
user might notice, if they were upgrading from an already-working X
server.

jonathan

On Sun, 2004-02-29 at 22:30, chris at thistlethwaite.net wrote:
> Is anyone excited about the new release of XFree86??  I
> was going to DL it today, but I wanted to see if anyone
> else tried it out.  I'm just not sure if its worth a
> couple hours on the phoneline.  Also, what's the deal
> with the new licensing?  Everyone is freaking out about
> it, I read through the changes and didn't see anything
> that would make me not use it.  There are a handfull of
> distros dropping 4.4 and just using 4.3.
> Thanks,
> Chris
>
> GO PENS!! 2 wins HHHOORRRRAAAYYYYY!
>
> "Everything you can imagine is real." -Pablo Picasso
> http://cthwaite.tripod.com <http://cthwaite.tripod.com> 
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--
Jonathan S Billings <billings at negate.org>

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