Re: Xfree86 4.4 vs Xorg Wrap-up
Francois Isabelle wrote:
3 - Xorg forked XFree86 due to these licensing considerations
The X.Org Foundation is the latest incarnation of a string of organizations
going back to the original MIT X Consortium that have produced the X Window
System software releases for over 15 years. XFree86 forked from the X
Consortium years ago, and ever since code has flowed back and forth both
ways. Xorg is not a "new fork of XFree86" - all that has happened is that
the original X Window System open source distribution has been opened up to
a more modern open source style development process and interest in it has
picked back up. This was in progress for a year before XFree86 changed their
license - the license change just gave more distributions incentive to change.
To make it easier for them to do so, the XFree86 4.4 portions not covered by
the new license were folded into the X11R6.6 tree to produce the upcoming
X11R6.7 release.
(The work on reviving X.Org came out of the traditional Unix vendors wanting
to open up X.Org to greater participation from the Linux, BSD, and other open
source communities, and from people dissatisfied with the governance of the
XFree86 Project. See the archives of the forum@xfree86.org mailing list
for all the various flamefests.)
--
-Alan Coopersmith- alan.coopersmith@sun.com
Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering
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