OSNews

I think the people from Xorg look at it quite a lot.
At least I hope they do, it would be a shame if so much work was duplicated.

There isn't much happening in xfree86. They only have a few contributors and a lot of the new code is under the xfree86 1.1 licence so X.org can't use it anyway.

Sadly Xorg can't take anything from Xfree since the Xfree licensing (which caused the split) is not GPL compatable.

Sadly Xorg can't take anything from Xfree since the Xfree licensing (which caused the split) is not GPL compatable.

Huh? I thought X.org was under the MIT license. Now I'll have to check, unless someone can chime in and confirm my assumption.

Some parts are licenced under the MIT, but the work from the folks in the XFree86 project is licenced under their own licence.

http://www.xfree86.org/legal/licenses.html

X.org is under the MIT license, but the new Xfree86 license is more restrictive, which is why they can't use the code.

Fortunately most of the former Xfree86 maintainers are now X.org maintainers, leaving Xfree86 irrelevant.

I am still using Suse Linux 7.3 on my NForce2 chipset together with XFree86. The 4.6.0 release works well. Although the updating of Suse 7.3 is sometimes very time-consuming, it is worth it, because it is as fast as lightning on my Athlon XP 2500+.

Xfree was the basis of xorg, so it's not like it was all bad. It is unfortunate that they decided to go with the license change that seemed to be the nail in the coffin, but there is something to be said for the project staying away from large changes. You might not be using it on your desktop machine, but for server environments where a rock solid stable X11 implementation is needed, Xfree might be a better option. Also, I'm not positive about this, but aren't there quite a few older unices that still haven't switched over to xorg (ie. AIX, HP-UX, etc)?

How many people have big mission critical servers running X? Is it possible, yes, does it exist, yes. But not so many servers run as remote unix gui sessions. Yeah I'd agree that for such environments the new xorg stuff is still a little too bleeding edge, but it'll calm down soon enough now that the xorg 7 reorg is mostly done.

Plus, if you actually want to have hardware compatibility then you really have to use xorg. New hardware support in Xfree is added slower then a glaciar on pluto.

Yeah, even for X applications, they are mostly displayed in eXceed on Windows clients than on an X server on the server itself actually !

Actually the license change was a great thing for the X system. It got people to fork it and create an amazing new branch rather quickly. If only they had done that years ago when Xfree86 stopped doing real work.

Xfree86 basically decided they wanted to remain a pure unix environment in the traditional sense and not add too many new features. Now look at Xorg, it is keeping the old concepts in there but also adding tons of new shit that is pretty exciting.

I am glad they changed the license, if only they would have done that 5-10 years ago instead.

It's OK, it isn't real.

(I hope!)

better question, why does the DB go down _so_ much of late (last few months or so)? not flaming, just would like to know

No kidding, I swear the DB has gone down at least once every single day for the last few months. I don't care if you start using Windows/MSSQL, just get something that works, PLEASE.

No kidding, I swear the DB has gone down at least once every single day for the last few months. I don't care if you start using Windows/MSSQL, just get something that works, PLEASE.

I agree. It's gettting pretty annoying. What is OSNews using anyway that is causing so many problems?

------------What is OSNews using anyway that is causing so many problems?----------------

Going down alot, causing problems?

Clearly, that's gotta be windows.

:-D

*ducks*

Clearly, that's gotta be windows.

Honestly, I thought it was because of Linux + MySQL. Not that I'm a Windows fan, but my username pretty much tells you where my loyalty lies.

the DB is down, they use MySQL, MySQL's mascot is a dolphin, so, when the DB is down a dolphin has been shot.

the DB is down, they use MySQL, MySQL's mascot is a dolphin, so, when the DB is down a dolphin has been shot.

Judging from how often that freaking dolphin is making an appearance now, I assume they're running MySQL on an OSX server.

=:-o

I've been visiting this site for years now and never once saw the database ever go down. Recently though, like all of you - I've been seeing it almost every day it seems.

Why does osnews show a poor dolphin being shot when the DB is down? I like dolphins.

It all depends on the sauce.

It better than the no soup for you error. I quite like soup and Dolphins. Maybe some Dolphin soup is in order <-;

As far as I am aware, Debian use Xfree in the last official release.
However, that is not the point. There is people here either trolling or making jokes about graveyards etc,
It is indeed a funny joke, however, there is a point that you all seem to miss.

Open source software, does not die, it does not fade away, it does not dwindle, it does not disappear..... The code is there for anyone to take and start to re-develop. Try that with proprietary stuff.

Only for "statble", As soon as you switch to "testing", your Xfree is replaced by an Xorg. Since they plan to release Etch as "stable" by the end of the year (if I remember well) Xfree is not going to be used a lot anymore. May be, as one said, by AIX HP-UX (though HP has now been selling lot's of Redhat on its servers... Redhat uses Xorg)

Xfree made it possible, but everythings comes to an end one day.
Le roi est mort. Vive le roi.

> The code is there for anyone to take and start to re-develop.

Too much code in this particular case.

add that debian etch has x.org and it ROCKS!

Xfree86 development is pretty much going on as usual, even before the fork. They release a little less than once per year and every new release contains some driver enhancements, some bugfixes, a few minor new features and an updated xterm. Nothing interesting really.