X.Org Foundation Releases X11R6.7 X Window System 443
Several folks submitted the press release announcing the formation of the X.Org Foundation and the release of X11R6.7 of the X Window System. The XOrg Foundation is the successor to the X Consortium, formed by many of the most notworthy participants in the XFree86 Project. This code release is a tree forked from the last XFree86 release not troubled by that pesky license change. Since Mandrake, Gentoo, OpenBSD, and Debian have already rejected the new XFree86 license, this new code tree will likely become the default X11 for most Linux users. I've attached the press release that explains more details about the code release, as well as the X.Org foundation itself.
XOrg Foundation writes "X.Org Foundation Announces Formation and First ReleaseThe new X.Org Foundation will help drive the X Window System to support
state-of-the-art desktop technologies
San Francisco, CA., April 6, 2004 - X.Org Foundation today announces their first release of the X Window System since the formation of the Foundation in January of this year. The new X.Org release, called X Window System Version 11 Release 6.7 (X11R6.7), builds on the work of the X.Org X11R6.6 and XFree86TM Project Inc. V4.4RC2 releases to combine many of the latest developments from a large number of the participants and companies working with the X Window community. The X Window System X11R6.7 release can be found at http://www.x.org/.
We have made great progress in creating a framework upon which further development of the X Window System can be based, agreed the Interim Board of the Foundation. We expect to provide the desktop community with at least two more releases of the X Window System before the end of this year to encompass all of the new technologies and ideas that we are developing.
This release marks the return to community development of the X Window System under governance open to all contributors for the first time since the founding of the X Consortium in 1988, said Jim Gettys, co-founder of the X Window System, Interim X.Org Foundation board member and member of the research staff of HP Labs.
We welcome the formation of the X.Org Foundation and are looking forward to support this group to bring the work on the X Window System to a new technological level, said Egbert Eich, X Window System developer at Novell's SUSE LINUX business unit.
Matthias Ettrich, Director of Software Development at Trolltech, said As a multi-platform GUI toolkit vendor, we appreciate the value of a powerful underlying windowing system, and as such, we are excited about the direction X.Org is heading. We are very much looking forward to supporting new technologies around X, and we will do our share to make the advances of the platform accessible to software developers.
Being an underlying technology to the most popular desktops on all GNU Systems, in particular GNOME and KDE, the X Window System is indeed an essential part of most Free Software operating systems, said Georg C.F. Greve, president of the FSF Europe. It helps many users to access and enjoy the freedom of Free Software. We are glad that X.Org will from now on watch over this enabling technology.
Red Hat is pleased to be working with the new X.Org Foundation to build a vibrant open source community around X Window System innovation. Look for X11R6.7 in the upcoming Fedora Core 2 and future Red Hat Enterprise Linux products, said Havoc Pennington, desktop development manager at Red Hat.
As one of the largest GNU/Linux distribution projects in the world, the Debian Project is delighted to see that freedom and diversity are alive and well in the X technology sector. We're also delighted that the X.Org Foundation is dedicated to retaining the licensing model that has made the X Window System an enduring success, said Branden Robinson of the Debian GNU/Linux Project. Like us, the X.Org Foundation is a member-driven organization devoted to Free Software. We cannot help but be enthusiastic about them and the work they're doing for the X Window System and Free Software communities alike.
An open source project works best with a large community of active contributors. OSI welcomes the return of X to open source development by the entire community. I'm looking forward to contributing myself, said Russell Nelson, Vice-President of the Open Source Initiative.
Cygwin/X is benefiting heavily from the community-building spirit of the X.Org Foundation and their open development environment. We are pleased to be basing our releases on the good work of the X.Org Foundation, said Harold L Hunt II of the Cygwin/X project.
The XonX Project is very pleased that the X.Org Foundation has been eager to support Darwin and Mac OS X. X11R6.7 adds new features that will be appreciated by many Mac OS X users, said Torrey Lyons, XonX Project Founder.
Membership of the X.Org Foundation is free to all participants. Applications for membership are now being accepted, and active participants in the further development of the X Window System are invited to visit: http://www.x.org/XOrg_Foundation_Membership.html to complete a membership application. Participation in the Foundations Sponsor Group is also available to those who wish to financially support the activities The X.Org Foundation. Current Sponsors include Hewlett Packard, IBM, and SUN Microsystems.
About The Foundation Release
X11R6.7 is the first official X.Org Foundation release. It is the successor release to X11R6.6 from X.Org. To assure consistency with industry and community requirements and practices, it was developed from the X.Org X11R6.6 code base and the XFree86 V4.4RC2 code base, with the addition of bug fixes and enhancements. These enhancements include: new IPv6 functionality, Freetype V2.1.7, fontconfig V2.2.2, Xft V2.1.6, Xcursor V1.1.2, and Xrender V0.8.4, with corresponding changes in documentation and notices. Additional source and binary releases are anticipated during 2004.
About The X Window System
The X Window System provides the only common networked windowing environment bridging the heterogeneous platforms in today's computing. The X Window System is one of the most successful open-source, collaborative technologies developed to date and is the standard graphical window system for the Linux and UNIX operating systems. The inherent independence of the X Window System from the operating system, the network and the hardware, as well as its successful interoperability, have made it widely available and deployed with more than 30 million users worldwide. All major hardware vendors support the X Window System and many third parties provide technologies for integrating X Window System applications into the networked computer or personal computer environments including Microsoft Windows, UNIX, Linux and Mac OS X. Further, thousands of software developers provide X Window System applications, and with the continued growth of Linux and the emergence of Mac OS X, the number of users is growing rapidly.
About X.Org Foundation
X.Org Foundation L.L.C. is a recently formed Delaware company organized to operate as a scientific charity under IRS code 501(c)(3), chartered to develop and execute effective strategies that provide worldwide stewardship of the X Window System technology and standards. The group is currently managed by an Interim Board of Directors that includes: Stuart Anderson (Free Standards Group), Egbert Eich (SUSE), Jim Gettys (HP), Georg Greve (Free Software Foundation Europe), Stuart Kreitman (SUN Microsystems), Kevin Martin (Red Hat), Jim McQuillan (Linux Terminal Server Project), Leon Shiman (Shiman Associates) and Jeremy White (Code Weavers). The website for the X.Org Foundation can be found at http://www.x.org/.
Note to editors: UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the US and other countries. LINUX is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. XFree86 is a trademark of The XFree86 Project, Inc. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Mac OS is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. All other company names are trademarks of the registered owners.
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great! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ugh (Score:5, Insightful)
It's stilly to rely on a directory named for a version of a program unless you want to update your software every time a new version comes out.
Re:more examples of Linux fragmentation (Score:1, Insightful)
Mandrake is not www.redhat.com for one, and it's not even the latest distro to be added to the list. Linux/Unix doesn't have a need for antivirus because it's not inviting the viruses as other OS'es do.
I didn't see it in the changelog... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ugh (Score:4, Insightful)
so have a
Step forward (Score:0, Insightful)
X11R6. I used that a decade ago.
Time gets spent squabbling about liscensing clauses and other political horseshit. Now we have how many code forks of it? How splintered, exactly, is the dev community around X11?
Linux on the desktop, that white elephant, will roam around in obscurity for another decade or so.
Re:I didn't see it in the changelog... (Score:1, Insightful)
freedesktop? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ah.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Licenses. (Score:4, Insightful)
And who knows that the X.Org libraries won't be made GPL incompatible in the future? At least with the XFree86 libraries, we know David Dawes is willing to compromise for the sake of the communitty.
Dinivin
Re:Step forward (Score:2, Insightful)
And there's nobody there so say "Fuck it, someone has to get this shit moving along. Fuck the forks, let's just work on this thing."
Politics! (Score:-1, Insightful)
I've got no clue what the new Xfree license entails... But nonetheless, I think the community is overreacting. By dropping Xfree, we no longer have any long-term alternatives (yeah, there are forks, but they haven't been around long enough to prove their stability or their worth).
Of course, I firmly believe that X needs to be replaced. Just not for political reasons. Whomever's in charge of X needs to form a panel of industry experts and draft an X12 protocol. In my mind, the panel should include network engineers, usability experts, etc. It must include representatives from both open and semi-open companies - Red Hat, the KDE and Gnome teams, present X developers, Apple, IBM, Sun, and possibly even Microsoft.
If we can create a modern standardized windowing protocol (which is what X11 essentially is, only broken and outdated), we can maxamize portability between platforms and radically simplify software development. Even Microsoft would jump on the bandwagon.
Let's not run ourselves up a river without a paddle. We need to maintain some sort of X11 system for the time being while we draft a new protocol. The current forks just don't seem stable enough, and seek to accomplish far too much and form their own proprietary standards. We need a completely new protocol so that everyone can work together and maintain compatibility.
Re:Licenses. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Politics! (Score:5, Insightful)
And it really shows in your post!
But nonetheless, I think the community is overreacting.
Right. Because RedHat and Debian are *such* reactionary GPL-fundamentalists organization.
(yeah, there are forks, but they haven't been around long enough to prove their stability or their worth).
You do realize that X.org is the maintainer of the reference X11R6.x codebase, and that X11R6.7 is a continuation of XFree86 4.4-RC2, which is a derivative of that reference codebase?
If we can create a modern standardized windowing protocol (which is what X11 essentially is, only broken and outdated),
What is broken and outdated about the X11 protocol? Taking into account widely-supported extensions like RENDER, the X11 protocol is surprisingly Good. There are warts, to be sure (the color model, for example), but every long-lived system has those.
we can maxamize portability between platforms
Eh? X11 is the most portable windowing system in existance!
and radically simplify software development.
So X12 will be written in Lisp
Even Microsoft would jump on the bandwagon.
Have you lost *complete* touch with reality???
and seek to accomplish far too much and form their own proprietary standards.
What proprietory standards???? Do you have the slightest idea what you're talking about?
We need a completely new protocol so that everyone can work together and maintain compatibility.
We need to ditch a widely-supported, well-tested, mature, easily-extensible, and highly compatible protocol, and create a new, untested, immature, and unsupported one, in order to maintain compatibility?
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Politics! (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, I firmly believe that X needs to be replaced. Just not for political reasons. Whomever's in charge of X needs to form a panel of industry experts and draft an X12 protocol. In my mind, the panel should include network engineers, usability experts, etc. It must include representatives from both open and semi-open companies - Red Hat, the KDE and Gnome teams, present X developers, Apple, IBM, Sun, and possibly even Microsoft.
So, you're saying that politics are killing X11, and the above mentioned entities should all get in a room to create X12? What do you think the politics are going to be like? Can you really seee Apple, IBM, Sun and Microsoft (MS - wtf would they want with X12) all getting together for the common good?
Re:XFree86 (Score:1, Insightful)
That's fucking awesome.
Nothing is stopping me from using XFree86 on my debian box, so if they decide to stop using it, I'll just compile it myself.
So long as minor issues like this are blown out of proportion, people are going to shy away from Linux. It's a shame, too.
Coding X (Score:2, Insightful)
I ask, whats so darn bad about X?
What does sucks so much about its protocol?
Re:Politics! (Score:4, Insightful)
a) this IS a fork
b) being as it is a fork, it is XFree, the latest version before the license change, just being improved and such.
c) you might have read the press release about who is supporting it - a whole lot of people. They are now no longer behind XFree.
d) XFree was a fork of the reference implementation of X, the latter being made by the X.org people to begin with.
The only question is; how many XFree86 developers will jump ship to X.org? My guess is, most of them. By changing the license, the XFree86 project has made itself irrelevant, and who want to work on an irrelevant open source project? Yes, if people continue using XFree86, you'd get credited on manuals etc., but already RedHat, SuSE and debian are moving to X.org; so you'd be credited in places no one gets to see anyway, and your patches are of no use to anyone.
Re:XFree86 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:alphablending etc. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:alphablending etc. (Score:1, Insightful)
The only thing worse than a monstrous windowing system is the infighting that follows it around.
Re:Pine Problems and Alternatives (Score:4, Insightful)
What modifications are needed to it in the first place? The stock-binary is well-maintained. And it is easy enough to apply a patch to the source code & recompile.
OSERP is under active development, but is still very alpha. I thought Hydrant had died, but some of the CVS files have been updated within the past year.
Why take RMS's opinion on free/nonfree as scripture? It is funny to see gratis software that ships with source being bashed for not being libre more than progams which don't ship with source.
I don't have a problem with Debian's commitment to libre software & their choice not to ship pine. But other distros don't seem to have a consistent stance on how free apps have to be before they're included.
Re:I didn't see it in the changelog... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Licenses. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Licenses. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is FUD. If X.org's license can be changed to be GPL-Incompatible, so can any other project, so your argument can be applied to any X Server, or any Open Source Project.
And when and if that happens, we'll just do what we did here, take the code from before the license change, and run with it.
Re:Pine Problems and Alternatives (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it also funny being sued for releasing patched versions?
- Chris
Re:Pine Problems and Alternatives (Score:5, Insightful)
I was using imap with mutt back in 1999. I haven't needed to use imap since 2000, but I don't imagine the support has gone away.
What modifications are needed to it in the first place? The stock-binary is well-maintained. And it is easy enough to apply a patch to the source code & recompile.
So apply the patch and compile it. But Red Hat won't do it for you because they can't distribute a binary based on modified source.
Why take RMS's opinion on free/nonfree as scripture? It is funny to see gratis software that ships with source being bashed for not being libre more than progams which don't ship with source.
Not "more than", but "as much as". If Red Hat can't patch pine even to fix bugs, why should they distribute it? If you need it you can always compile it yourself.
Re:Licenses. (Score:5, Insightful)
Dinivin
Re:The question is (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope. The alternative is a cleaned-up fork of XFree86 4.4RC2, binary-compatible with XFree86 4.4.0.
It's not the giving of credit that's the issue; it's the matter of GPL compatibility. Cute strawman.
Freetype 2.1.7 is the latest stable release of Freetype2. Not everyone uses the Linux version number scheme where an odd-numbered minor version number indicates a development version rather than a stable version.
Re:Pine Problems and Alternatives (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the argument I hear from DJB fans, too. The modifications can be as simple as telling it to look for config files in the place that a particular OS keeps them, rather than where the application thinks they should go. Now, IANAPineExpert, but imagine that it wants link against something in /usr/lib, but on a particular OS, that library is in /usr/local/lib. Patching the system to look in the latter directory may be enough to violate the terms of distribution, making it illegal for the vendor to supply a binary copy.
Sure, they can provide a "tracker" to download, patch, and compile the source. However, that implies having a working compiler and the development package for every dependency, which makes it troublesome for anyone who wants to provide the program on a shared machine where they don't want the users to have access to a compiler (and yes, there are systems like that).
That's why this is more than just pettiness. The terms of the license may be difficult or impossible to follow by a vendor, even if they're acceptable to the end users. In this case, that's why Mutt is wildly popular but few people ever mention using Pine anymore.
And no, I don't use Mutt. Gnus makes them all obsolete. ;-)
Re:Good job distributions (Score:2, Insightful)
2. Licensing
X Window System source code is covered by many licenses. All of these
licenses have in common the fact that they do not impose significant condi-
tions on the modification or redistribution or either source code or binaries
beyond requiring one or more of the following:
1. Copyright and/or license notices are left intact.
2. Copyright and/or license notices are reproduced verbatim in documenta-
tion accompanying binary distributions.
3. Attributions are included with documentation accompanying binaries.
Most of these licenses are based on the MIT, X Consortium, or BSD (original
and revised) licenses. All of them are consistent with the Open Source Defi-
nition, and most are consistent with the Free Software Foundation's Free
Software Definition.
You see GPL anywhere in there? These licenses are non-comforming licenses. The GPL is MUCH more restrictive. The whole reason the recent xfree86 license switch is controversial is because they added more restrictions! The GPL isn't the end all and be all of licenses, and much free software does not use it. Sorry to disappoint.
Re:Pine Problems and Alternatives (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, Fedora doesn't come with any of that software (and to my knowledge, without any non-free software at all). A point in favour of the distro in my opinion, especially considering that you can easily grab it yourself with apt later on.