Hi Stefan,I am discussing here being in a double role. I am part of X2Go upstream, redistributing the nx-libs tarballs and also member of the Debian X2Go packaging team.
On Fr 13 Jan 2012 00:37:57 CET Stefan Lippers-Hollmann wrote:
Hi On Friday 13 January 2012, Mike Gabriel wrote:Package: wnpp Version: N/A; reported 2012-01-06 Severity: wishlist * Package name : nx-libs Version : 3.5.0.3 Upstream Author : Mike Gabriel, Oleksandr Shneyder, Reinhard Tartler * URL : wiki.x2go.org * License : GPLv2 Description : NX protocol libraries and binaries[...]NX (redist) aka nx-libgs.git on: http://git.x2go.org http://code.x2go.org/gitweb?p=nx-libs.git;a=summary - full code base -> master branch - lite/client-only code base -> client-only branchThis appears to still contain a full (according to its size and a short look at your packaging git),
The packaging Git is on Alioth: http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/x2go/nx-libs.git;a=summary Do you refer to that one? The redistributor's Git of NX (redistributed) is on X2Go Git: http://code.x2go.org/gitweb?p=nx-libs.git;a=summary
forked monolithic X.org 6.9 source tree.
This is indeed the case.
Most likely with little to no bug-/ security fixes since 2005 - or am I missing anything vital in that packaging git? Likewise the current debian/copyright appears to lack all copyright notices of the original XFree86/ X.org code, which makes up, by far, most of the source.
The X2Go upstream team will be open to security and feature patches and will love to be pointed at security issues discovered. In the very very very long run there might be someone (we are currently talking about people in Austria being interested in such a project) who refactors NX for latest Xorg code, but currently what we can provide is an active maintenance of NoMachine's code.
And: NoMachine has lately released several tarballs around NX, please refer to http://www.nomachine.com/sources.php or check out the separate tarball import branches on nx-libs.git on X2Go Git.
What are the plans for its future maintenance, given that NoMachine NX4 appears to switch to a closed source development model and is likely to abandon the NX 3.5 code base rather soon? In a similar fashion FreeNX appears to be dead upstream since November 2008 (and already was dead way before that).
We are not packaging for FreeNX. We intend to package NX for usage with X2Go. And X2Go has been continuously active during the last years, esp. during 2011.
However, what we took care of is that the way we redistribute latest NX sources does not interfere with FreeNX code and also provides all FreeNX functionalities. One reason for FreeNX becoming less and less active probably was the trouble getting nx-X11 into Debian.
The placing of a redistributor between Linux distros and the original tarball provider NoMachine (who has not proved to be active on incorporating patches) aims at becoming more flexible and open to contributions here.
Wouldn't it make more sense to concentrate on filling the gaps to re-use something like Red Hat's SPICE protocol for remote desktop uses?
No, performance tests fail for us compared to NX. All technologies around apart from NX use capturing algorithms and they scale quite badly on low-bandwidth networks.
Regards Stefan Lippers-Hollmann Disclaimer: I've had my bite with trying to package early NX 1.x, NX 2.x versions intended for Debian, but the sheer amount of forked upstream code (in particular nx-x11) and, back then, nxssh, samba, rdesktop, esound made those attempts appear to be an endeavour in futility. However I didn't actually follow development in this arena since the early NX 3 era.
Things are moving so may I invite to take another look? Thanks for your open and honest feedback. Mike -- DAS-NETZWERKTEAM mike gabriel, dorfstr. 27, 24245 barmissen fon: +49 (4302) 281418, fax: +49 (4302) 281419 GnuPG Key ID 0xB588399B mail: mike.gabriel@das-netzwerkteam.de, http://das-netzwerkteam.de freeBusy: https://mail.das-netzwerkteam.de/freebusy/m.gabriel%40das-netzwerkteam.de.xfb
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