Request of removal of xv
 

While I think of stallman being a bit too much integralist, read:
http://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.en.html
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...re-4175423557/

As reference I think that xv is actually pointless, I don't think we need it anymore, so why not to remove it and be a little bit more free ?(even in the myopic gnu view).

If xv keeps the fundamentalists away from Slackware, then Slackware should retain xv at all costs.

Slackware is a great operating system for me - not a political movement - let's keep it that way.

I don't use xv, but that doesn't mean I don't think anyone else does.

Why not add a poll to this thread? "Do you use xv? YES or NO"

I find it rather funny bearing in mind that the above request was posted on MacOS (sorry, couldn't resist) LOL.

Back on topic: xv is not the only non-free piece of software that I use on Slackware so it doesn't bother me.

@Celyr: If you feel guilty to use it for free (which is allowed by John Bradley, as long as you don't make a professional usage of it), just purchase a license or don't use it.

Other than that xv have been part of Slackware for a so long time that it won the right to stay there for a some more years ;)

And if we were to remove a package from Slackware every time someone find it useless it would end up including only the Linux kernel.

A strict definition of "nonfree" means quite a bit of popular "free/libre" software is actually non-free:

http://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_...ion_Guidelines

There is one freedom "the four freedoms" do not address: the freedom to choose. Users are free to use free or nonfree software. If they choose the former then they accept the terms of usage of the respective license. If they choose the latter then they accept the terms of usage of the respective license.

In all, I believe free/libre software promotes a better planet, but to be free myself, I can't deny the freedom to choose for other people.

With that said, I suppose Pat needs to know how many Slackware users still use xv. Slackware is packaged with several image viewers and image manipulation programs, but perhaps xv continues to fill a specific void that non xv users are unaware.

I don't think anyone really listens to RMS and the GNU crew and takes their ideals.
I mean look at hurd, if GNU is so great why has it taken them 22 years just to get a functional kernel going?
FOSS is a great idea on paper, but by the time free implementations are available, the hardware that they were meant to run on is ancient. I mean Linux ran on my 386 and my 486... hurd runs on my i7... see the issue here?

I don't know who really uses xv anymore but if Pat has still included it, then their has to be some demand for it.

I like Slackware for home use, but in the environment I work in it is necessary to have a package manager that can fetch updates, apply them without any issue, up time is critical for me, we use SLES at work for most of our servers.

I have Slack boxes at work however, just because it's easy to hack and make it do what you want it to do. (I refuse for the most part to work in a windows environment)

broken?

I was leaning towards agreeing with the OP - I think xv could be dropped, if there was a good reason to do so. Then I followed the link to gnu.org and read that Slackware has lots of company on this list. And that dropping xv alone won't grant Slackware their approval. And that they disapprove some distributions because "they make it too easy to install non-free software". Should software now be written to make it difficult to do things GNU disapproves of? That sounds like an awful idea. So - yes, keep xv.

I don't think it is a good idea.. Removing xv alone wouldn't satisfy the 'completely free' requirements, and if we removed everything we needed too then Slackware just wouldn't be Slackware.

xv seems handy as a very light and fast image viewer for use from the command line. It also can handle displaying images from stdin (eg. 'cat foo.jpg | xv -'), which I don't think the other viewers included in Slackware can do.

Does it hurts anybody?
Does it makes Slackware unusable?
Does it nailed to Slackware itself so it cannot be removed?
Is there any better replacement for it?
Does it make any unrecoverable problems?
I don't think there is at least one positive answer.
/thread

I use xv quite frequently and have been doing for the last decade or so.
In my opinion, nothing comes closer to the ease of use that xv provides for a quick pick at an image.
I would definitely do NOT want xv to be removed, especially based on some vague puritan views.

There's 'display', part of image magick: 'cat foo.jpg | display'. It also has many of xv's other features.

XV is shareware that can be legally redistributed as long as it retains the license agreement, source package, and does not exclude the option to purchase a license for commercial level usage.

Stallman and GPL have tons of fundamental flaws it's not even honestly worth arguing over.

For no practical reason, the Slackware team is supposed to remove a piece of software people use and allow GNU to set the standards for what they are allowed to include in the future?

If it were me, I'd say Stallman's freedom is too restrictive. :)

The GNU and GPL is not true freedom, it's more like socialism/communism in practice for software. You have to share sources when you have GPL with everyone. You can not use software that isn't compatible with the GPL like CDDL, and you the developer have no real control what goes on with your software such as ports and forks.

xv's license is restrictive because it does not allow modifications of source.

Also the developer does not seem to care about the outdated license. If the s/w has any use, then it should be dual licensed.

There is risk associated with unused s/w on any system as well ...
So xv should be dropped.

I agree with this and have been using xv for more than a decade.

I've used Gimp but it is not as simple to use as xv.

Is there a better simpler graphics editor than xv or gimp that does everything that xv does?

If it ain't broken don't fix it.

I like xv and have been using it just every now and then for over a decade. Keep it. Slackware is my os not my political platform. If stallman et al are unhappy, astonishingly enough, i can live with that :)

Using the Hurd's lack of mature development as a means to dismiss RMS and the GNU crew is unfair. It has been mentioned that advancing the development of the Hurd is basically useless - and has been for a long time - because at this point (and for a while...) it is simply impossible to have a free competitor to Linux. Imagine if the Hurd did mature a bit: who would contribute to it rather than to Linux? Nobody would; not because the Hurd is a failure, but rather because Linux boomed and became wildly successful. It was one or the other, and it was Linux.

Nobody is required to use GPL software and therefore nobody is required to agree unless they publicly distribute the changes they make to the code. Users are free to participate or free not to participate. Bottom line is nobody gets less than they bargained and some might get more. How more free can you get?

Off topic, I've read a bit of the 19th century socialist and communist writers. Their theories were based upon free association and voluntary exchange (just like the GPL BTW). The nonsense that is titled today as socialism or communism is nothing more than Yet Another Face of Statism --- a philosophy based upon violence, threat of violence, and the use of forcible coercion.

I think there is a bit of irony in that the only "free" system the FSF would recommend is one that could possibly only be implemented when the system doesn't make it easy to install anything that doesn't fit in their narrow definition of free. That doesn't sound like a "free" thing to me.

I think the best software licenses do two things:
1) Builds trust
2) Doesn't restrict individuals use

Copyright law is a funny thing, but it makes sense to help promote creative producers. Of course, copyright is too abstract to fit all things perfectly, so licensing/law interpretation fits the gap. Unfortunately, some people infringe on the spirit of copyright and take it to extremes that violates trust or takes the usefulness out of an art.

I believe the xv shareware license and the added trust by providing the source makes it a good choice of a program. After all, after all these years, if there was no source, fewer people would have trusted it, and it would have likely been pulled from slackware because it likely would have stopped working by now. You also still have a choice in using it or not, and that is also just as important.

Now whether or not the usefulness/age of the program is one thing, but the other part of it not being free enough is ridiculous because my freedom has never been restricted. I also believe in a programmer's right to make money by his art too.

Didn't the author of XV allow patch submissions to be sent to him for inclusion?

I remember he allowed 3rd party patches to be maintained because 3.10a was the last official release, and since then many patches have been made, but none ever official.

display(1) has no equivalent to xv's -maxpect, visual schnauwzer, or color editor, all of which I use frequently (and I hardly ever use xv *without* -maxpect).. Until such a time that there is something that can actually replace xv, please, let us keep it.

Old is not necessarily bad (else why would we be using the world's oldest surviving linux distribution?).

I tried to add a pool the the thread editing the first post but i was not able to. Do we need a moderator for that ?

It was iOS.

Actually I use every software I need to get the work I have to do done. The point it's a bit different. I consider xv a piece of outdated software that is fully replaced by other packages (but I may be wrong). What I want to say is, considering everything is it worth to keep ?


Gimp can't do that ?

Whether xv remains in Slackware or not is probably up to Pat. The kernel also includes the firmware blobs, so anyone who removes xv will presumably be rebuilding their kernel to remove those as well.

If you read the list on the previous page, even Debian's APT is listed... because the sample sources.list included some repos which point to non-free software... the most common usage for non-free in Debian is to get the kernel microcode blobs. Somewhat ironically, prior to the Debian project's removal of the firmware blobs from their kernels, most users were only adding non-free for stuff like the proprietary GPU drivers and flash, now most users just go for it by default, because 9 times out of 10, your GPU, wireless adapter or some other hardware requires something in there...

Whoa, for a second there I thought this was a thread about removing xz and I was about to rush in with a WTF, no way!

Anyway, now that my heartbeat has stopped racing on to the real question. Personally no I wouldn't remove xv. It is a handy tool that this nice to have in the default install and as others have pointed out removing it would not make Slackware 'free' in the GNU sense anyway. So you'll need another reason if you want it removed.

That all said, regarding this point:

I prefer feh. ;)

When I install a new Slackware version and surf the packages menu removing stuff, Xv is one of the packages that never makes into the final install.

Those who want it can take it in. Those who want it not can leave it out. I don't think it is a big deal whenever it is included in the main distribution or not, as if there is demand for it, someone will find a way to install it, officially or otherwise.

When I install a new Slackware version I don't remove anything. I have enough room on my laptop's hard disk, so what would be the rationale?

Simply "display image.jpg" is enough.

But the problem is that "xv" is two letters and "display" is seven -- not so convenient to use in the midnight commander command line.

@Hendri2201: You are spamming threads at random seemingly to draw attention on a non related problem you have. This is has been reported.

I don't have a problem with xv; I might not have used it in years, but if it ain't broke why remove it? If we're gonna get rid of duplicated software, what about the umpteen different shells, window managers, etc?

Anyway, people are free to install or not. One of the good things about Slack is you can roll your own version via the tagfiles.

Slackware may not be completely "free software", but until and unless that becomes policy I don't we need worry about it.

I don't think Slackware as a whole actually cares about any of these points. If that puts Slackware on The List, then so be it.

Try xpaint. Despite the name, it's actually kept up to date. Might not have ALL the features xv has (definitely not as much as gimp) but it's good for a quick draw.

Because people still use xv. It doesn't really matter if it has that new FOSS smell or not, although I would like to know the circumstances that got xv in as an image viewer - it seems to be a bit of a different choice for a Linux distro.

This has absolutely no hate towards GNU or rms - it's just simply an issue that I don't think matters much. Some other distro's care quite a lot about Free Software (Debian comes to mind, despite it making it to the same The List), but I think having an orthodox, usable system trumps licensing issues in this case.

For the record, I use feh.

Sometimes you have not much room to spare.

Sometimes you have not the desire to keep additional software in the system, because it would mean having to update it every time a security flaw was discovered (well, it depends on your environment). Just recompiling the kernel and taking out undesired functionality of it has saved me lots of kernel upgrades, as many security defects affected modules I didn't compile.

Sometimes you want to reduce the size of your backups and the time it takes to make them.

Sometimes you absolutely know you are not going to use the software, so what is the rationale to install it?

@BlackRider: granted, I should have stated that there's no rationale doing that for me. I do admit that there can be one for others.

As a side note, as I use rsync for backing-up on an 1 TB external hard disk, that's not an issue here. Oh, and before somebody point it out: yes, I am aware that using an external HDD for back-ups can be considered unsafe.

If PV and the rest of the Slackware team did care about the politics of this--at least enough to put it into practice--then xv wouldn't be there in the first place. And yet it is. So why discuss it? If a software developer feels the need to adopt FOSS principles to the degree that they can get all warm and fuzzy with the FSF and GNU and whomever else, then fine. They are free to write or adopt any program or code that makes that happen. But it is in my opinion in poor taste to come into an already highly established distro with principles of its own and say, Gee, guys, you need to stop using this code, because you are not conforming to my own extremely controversial set of moral principles. Keep your politics off my operating system!

With all due respect, I believe that if the OP wants to use a "free" distro, he is free to pick one off the list which GNU has so graciously provided.

I don't use it actively, but it proved usefull from time to time. It's low on dependencies and can be installed even on the most minimal X11 setups. And is probably and suprisingly one of the rare image viewers that can show X11 bitmaps correctly.

Anyway, that won't make Slackware GNU clean. So I don't see the point.

Btw, you can easily customize your installation from the install menu or with custom tag files.

There has been one 100 % libre Slackware derivative a couple of years ago: Kongoni GNU/Linux. Basically it was a Slackware + ports system. The whole distribution lasted less than a year, then it was more or less abandoned, and now exists in a semi-comatose state. As was to be expected, the same questions kept popping up on the Kongoni forum. How do I play Flash videos? How do I get my wireless NIC to work? It was only a matter of time before the vast majority of users decided to change their ideals in favour of a fully working machine.

I don't really care, because I don't use it and don't install it. If I had to vote, I would remove it, because there exist FLOSS alternatives ... imagemagick, graphicsmagick, etc.

IMO, proprietary software should be avoided if equivalent FLOSS alternatives exist. Of course, if I really wanted to deny your freedom of choice I would somehow make it impossible to install xv ... which I would not do. You are free to install xv if you like, but I would say that to keep an OS secure, free, open, etc. you should avoid proprietary software if FLOSS alternatives exist. Is there any particular reason to use proprietary software over FLOSS ? I only see reasons to use FLOSS, and not proprietary software.

RMS is extreme in some of his statements and points of view, but without him there would be not GNU, and probably no Linux either. This does NOT mean that Slackware should strive to live up to his stringent standards, I don't think there is a point to that. However, one should favor FLOSS over proprietary software as long as they are relatively equivalent. As such, getting rid of xv is not a bad idea.

EDIT:
Imagine if proprietary software would be favored over FLOSS ... what will result is Window$ with a Linux kernel.

EDIT2:
See the below post, it seems that xv is actually FLOSS, I was just confused.

As a sidenote: I use xv during the creation/conversion of subtitles:

http://www.andrews-corner.org/fist.html#subtitles

You are mixing criteria for choice here.

As "secure" is high in my own hierarchy I tend to privilege "open source" over other features. As xv is open source I have no problem using it. The original author, John Bradley, go as far as request that you get the source *before* you buy a license.

Ah, ok I was confused by the site and the payments.

Here's the license I found along with the source:

To me it seems that it actually is FLOSS, so I correct my previous statement, there is no reason to remove xv. Sorry for the confusion.

That is a distortion. We are talking about software that can be freely distributed as long as you do not directly make a profit from it. That's hardly Microsoft Windows.

Edit: just saw your newest reply, nevermind. I think we're on the same page about the licensing.

You're right, it's similar to the creative commons non-commercial license, which is a good license IMO, I mean I would use it if I released software.

John Bradley is a friend of Pat's. Slackware is Pat's distribution.

I agree with you. I would too.

I see no equivalent to xv's -maxpect, no. Do you?

Also, a common use case for viewers like feh, display, and xv is specifying several images on the command line, and spacebar'ing or arrow-key'ing through them one at a time. Gimp brings up all of the images at once. One could approximate this feature via something like:
.. but then you'd have to wait for gimp to come back up after every image, which takes a few seconds even on modern hardware, and changes made while viewing one image would be lost when viewing the next image, and there would be no easy way to go back to a previous image.

I've used xv before, don't see a reason to remove it. It definitely should NOT be removed to appease the FSF. I really don't care what the FSF thinks of Slackware Linux. Regarding xv, the only one to decide that is Patrick Volkerding.

Amen.