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#1 2004-02-20 21:39:18

Bobonov
Member
From: Roma - Italy
Registered: 2003-05-07
Posts: 295

After X there is Y.

During tha last days we discussed about that change of license of xfree86 and in the meanwhile many "bigger" distro decide sto stay with xfree 4.3.0 (with the old lincense).

Some time ago I found out about a new project that was born from a final work at university.

Now this work is going on and there was a call for developers to have it grow up, here is the website
http://www.y-windows.org/
Of course it is in a very alpha stage but hopefully due to the change in xfree it can collect a lot of developer (usually it work in this way  big_smile )

For sure there is also another project but I do not rember either the name or the web address, but I rember ithey also started to work on graphic acceleration for some videocard (I remeber matrox is the best supported one)

Do you have any news  about other system??

What about xfree 4.4.0 and arch??

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#2 2004-02-20 23:11:30

sarah31
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From: Middle of Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 2,975
Website

Re: After X there is Y.

well this is one of the problems with the open source community. NOt only are they well behind on a nice gui environment but when some feels they have a better system they just create a new one. the end result is more toolkits with par or sub par looks or a whole new idea for desktop like fredesktop, or this one you talk of.

i am no xfree86 fan but the best course of action for open source is to continue with the one that keeps them in the game, namely xfree86. if you run the old free86 then move on to something else you are back a squre one, largely, waiting for it to get better and better. in other words linux, bsd and who ever else will always be one step behind the competition.

i do not see this licence as a "threat" yet all i see is the big fish not being able to play by their rules any more and getting all bitter and slapping the face of the project that got them and kept them in the desktop game.

it very sad but the xfree86 license change is a benefit not a liability.


AKA uknowme

I am not your friend

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#3 2004-02-20 23:13:57

Bobonov
Member
From: Roma - Italy
Registered: 2003-05-07
Posts: 295

Re: After X there is Y.

By trying to find the other website I found other graphical server

http://www.xouvert.org/
Xouvert is an experimental branch of the X server shipped by XFree86 (TM)
Probably it change its license according to xfree.

http://www.fresco.org/
Even if it seem freez (last news is almost 10 month ago) the devel list has recent post..

http://www.ggi-project.org/
Here is another

http://directfb.org/xdirectfb.xml
http://directfb.org/modules.xml
And this is the one I was talking about in my previous post. As you can see it is quite interesting

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#4 2004-02-20 23:22:45

Bobonov
Member
From: Roma - Italy
Registered: 2003-05-07
Posts: 295

Re: After X there is Y.

Well for me to I do not see this BIG problem about  new xfree lincense. I think this is more a problem for big distribution that sell a nice CD with xfree on it.
Anyway around the web there are several interesting proposal.
For sure none of them is mature as xfree but they can grow faster by using the experience and the error that were done in xfree.
I think is going to be like with sendmail.
Some years ago it was defacto the standard for SMTP under lunix system.
But necessity were changing in time and it started to feel the heavy of an outdated project and people started to make replacement. and now we have exim, postifix ....
For sure these project are not ready in one year but in 2/3  year they can became valid competitors to xfree.

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#5 2004-02-20 23:42:17

sarah31
Member
From: Middle of Canada
Registered: 2002-08-20
Posts: 2,975
Website

Re: After X there is Y.

well my point was that open source tends to spread their talent out instead of working together to make a truly competative product. this is definitely one of th reasons that it is so hard to convince hardware/device manufacturers to support linux/bsd. they just look at the infighting and disarray and general dislike of anything remotely business-like and run for the hills.

for gads sake aplle and ibm have shown interest why discourage them by freaking out at every change that the general paranoid non-law knowledgable geek does not like? arch would benefit greatly by exploring just what the licence means and stay ahead of the game instead of crippling themselves with buggy beta servers. the devs have enough to deal than to try introducing unstable gui servers as a standard.

like i have siad generally the distros that are NOT going to xfree86 4.4.0 are the ones that manipulate the code the most and would thus have to add all sort of checks and balances to fulfill the licence. for them the work to do that it is not worth it. for arch they basically use a vanilla source with only fontconfig removed so their ability to carry xfree86 4.4.0 would be very easy from what i could tell.


AKA uknowme

I am not your friend

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#6 2004-02-21 07:11:21

Bobonov
Member
From: Roma - Italy
Registered: 2003-05-07
Posts: 295

Re: After X there is Y.

Yes I completely agree with you. To often there is a multipling of the same project or many different project that are doing more or less the same thing with the result of loosing energy in several direction to obtain the same result.
Another problem is that there are projects that are too much "proud" to say ok people time is changing, now there are new technology to use and new need to implement and our code is too old to continue to work on it.
For me is the case of sendmail, at a certain point it becamed so complicate and the configuration so messy that developer need to try to rewrite it from grassroot instead going on.
For xfree is the same. It was a project to create an opensource version of X. In the beginning it was only a system to draw window and have button to close them, it did not had any high functionality and now start to suffer of this.
Now that linux is becoming more and more a graphic system (I hope it never lose its "I can do everithing by command line" charateristic) xfree start to show its limit.
It was never  projected to support advanced graphic features, with reason of course, and most of the feature it has now were added in some way over the code.
Originally it was not a project thinked with big expansion but juts a port.
For instance this is one of the reason xfree lacks in performance. It was never thinked to support propelly graphic accelleration or other advanced graphic feature.
What I like of y is that it does not try to re-invent the wheel, they are using already existing and stable library. They are only re-enginering the core xfree functionality, this is the reason I think they can do a fast develop. I hope doing it they also try to have better modularity for their project so future implementation are real implementation instead of addiction to the code.

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#7 2004-02-22 17:59:58

cmf
Member
Registered: 2003-10-18
Posts: 86

Re: After X there is Y.

Y is totally brandnew... no X11 apps will work on it (as basically all linux gui apps) it's a testbase made up of new code and new ideas... pointless to install really, unless you wish to dev on it.. and in no-way will you be able to use it... all it has iirc is a calc, clock and term.. so yeah! (you could use it if you are a cli-only user.. to get pretty real transparency on the framebuffer wink )

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#8 2004-03-01 19:34:07

Thikasabrik
Member
Registered: 2004-02-23
Posts: 92

Re: After X there is Y.

Don't forget the X Server being developed at freedesktop.org! It works as it is, but is not ready for use yet because of the lack of an nvidia driver and because it has not had a proper packaged release among other reasons I assume... but when the developers feel it is ready, this looks to be the most viable xfree86 alternative.

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