What's the scoop on XFree 4.4

Crito · 07-06-2004, 09:16 AM

I read that NetBSD has incorporated the release, good for them. I'm a little unclear on what plans OpenBSD and FreeBSD have for it however. Am looking forward to being GNU free in 2003.. oh wait, it's 2004, but that doesn't rhyme.

chort · 07-06-2004, 08:03 PM

OpenBSD has XFree86 4.4 in -current. They forked since the license terms were changed.

rehab junkie · 07-06-2004, 08:56 PM

I thought FreeBSD could not include XFree86-4.4.0 due to changes in licencing. The binaries and source are available from www.xfree86.org but won't be seen in the ports tree.

Crito · 07-07-2004, 06:20 AM

It's my understanding that the new XFree license is BSD compatible, it's just not GPL compatible. Anyway, looks like I may be switching to NetBSD.

Thanks for the info.

rehab junkie · 07-07-2004, 06:53 AM

Why? The binaries from the xfree site work perfectly.

Crito · 07-07-2004, 07:03 AM

I had problems with RC2 when I installed it on my Mandrake box, though I admit I haven't tried the release version yet. Would really rather have it part of the distro and tested with all the other software components however. Just makes my life easier.

chort · 07-07-2004, 10:51 AM

Actually OpenBSD won't be using any of the code under the new license. They importd 4.4 and removed all the changes that happened under the new license. They're doing their own patching now, thus they've created a fork.