Re: X11R6.4 and Debian
On Wed, Apr 01, 1998 at 10:38:36AM -0500, Marco Anglesio wrote:
> >From comp.os.linux.development.system
>
> >This is from the official announce of X11 R6.4:
[commercial use licensing fee]
> How will this influence the composition of future versions of Debian?
Not very much.
> IIRC, a current topic on debian-user has been that non-free works are not
> included in the official debian distribution; if X11R6.4 becomes non-free,
> would that mean that X11R6.4 would no longer be distributed with Debian
> (at least not on official CD-ROM's)?
>
> IMHO not including X11R6.4 would be a major barrier to new users trying
> out Debian.
I don't think so. XFree86 (which is based on X11R6.3) will remain free (see
http://slashdot.org/articles/9841102444.shtml ).
I suspect that the result of making the "Open Group"'s X non-free is that
development of that version will start to fall behind the free version
quickly. If the commercial folks don't want the freeware folks to have their
contributions at all, it is very likely the freeware folks don't want them
to profit from their contributions without doing something in return any
longer. One way of doing that would be to switch X from BSD-like to GPL
licensing.
HTH,
Ray
--
Obsig: developing a new sig
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