From: Mike A. H. <mh...@ww...> - 2003-07-20 05:03:30
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On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, Steve Baker wrote: >> As long as freeglut is under an OSI approved license, and _not_ >> "GPL", it will likely be included in any Linux distributions >> without problems. > >Right - but that way we have to win over a dozen or more distro >groups/companies - and the users are thrown into chaos and confusion >as some distro's continue to ship GLUT, others freeglut and yet others >ship neither. Well, I can't speak for other distributions, but I can speak for Red Hat Linux at least. As long as freeglut has an OSI approved license, and it is not GPL, assuming it replaces glut well, I would ship it in Red Hat Linux as the official replacement for GLUT. I prefer to remove the "GLUT" packages entirely, however that decision is not yet made, but is very likely. So MIT/BSD/LGPL is fine for all purposes to replace GLUT. However if the license were GPL, then freeglut would not completely replace GLUT, and we'd be in a bind. I'd either ship both freeglut and glut, or neither, or just keep the broken glut that doesn't work with Nvidia's drivers - which would suck. >However, if freeglut were to replace GLUT in Mesa and/or Xfree86, >then it would immediately replace GLUT in every distribution in >one fell swoop. Not necessarily, but it would likely a stand higher chance of doing so. I'm not keen on shipping stuff that comes with XFree86 however if I can package it separately. Having everything built with XFree86 makes it monolithic and makes it impossible to release an update for that one subcomponent. ie: If I shipped freeglut in our XFree86 packages, then I could not update _just_ freeglut. But that's just a packaging decision made distro to distro. The benefit of having freeglut in XFree86 sources, is for systems that do not come with glut or freeglut by default but which it is needed to compile something in XFree86. Another thing you should be aware of, is that in addition to the license of software included in XFree86 needing to be MIT or similar, generally things are not added unless something that is part of the XFree86 build procedure _requires_ it. That is the case for the majority of things included in XFree86, but there are some exceptions of course. Being included in Mesa might be enough to get it into XFree86 though. >GLUT would be obsolete at a stroke - and would completely vanish >in a couple of years. I'd say GLUT is obsolete (for all intents and purposes) 6 months after we ship our next distro. >Until that happens, it will be hard for application programmers >to take advantage of the whizzy new features we add. Simple solution to that, is to get more software out there unconditionally relying upon freeglut features not present in glut. ;o) >The Xfree86 team will ONLY accept Xfree licensed packages. No >other license - no matter how "compatible" - will be acceptable >to them. There is BSD licensed stuff in XFree86 sources. There are other exceptions as well, such as the Luxi and Marthudo fonts, which have restrictions. >So - I say again - freeglut is under Xfree and must remain that way. >End of debate. I agree, and wasn't debating that. ;o) I was just commenting on other people's thoughts about license changes and how that would affect distribution decisions, XFree86 inclusion and other items. There is no good reason IMHO to change the license from MIT. -- Mike A. Harris |