Re: X compression techniques (was Re: VNC server based on kdrive using damage extension?)

Around 23 o'clock on Feb 18, Ely Levy wrote:

> I also think we should start being a bit more strict about the license of
> the code that gets into xserver one is more than enough.. I do know the NX
> people are intrested in integrating their code into the xserver (they were
> at least for xouvert), it would be nice to have it as an extention or xlib
> code.

There's a difference between code which we incorporate into an official
'freedesktop platform' and code which is hosted at freedesktop.org; we 
have code using a wide variety of licenses living on the freedesktop site, 
and certainly GPL'd pieces of NX could as well.

I'm trying to make it clear what licenses go with which bits of software.  
For core X window system functionality (X server, X protocol libraries), 
I'd like to make sure everything continues to be released under the MIT 
license.  Ensuring that the packages labeled as "the X Window System" are 
uniformly licensed will make derivative works from that software easier to 
manage.

This will probably entail a combination of reducing the scope of "the X
Window System", having other copyright holders relicense their software,
and perhaps accepting some liceneses which are functionality equivalent to
the MIT license.

For pieces beyond "the X window system", I'd like to see a wider range of 
possible licenses accepted.  Any potential license should be DFSG-free and 
ideally OSI approved.  Aside from that, each license should be evaluated 
as to it's effect on the overall software distribution.

As for NX; it sounds pretty nifty, but I have no use for it at this point 
as I don't run X applications over a low bandwidth/high latency network.  

For people who do, certainly something needs to be done; we've demonstrated
that existing applications cannot be usefully used with latencies in the
100ms range with either LBX or SSH.  While it's possible to fix the
applications, it's far easier to just proxy the X protocol to hide the
latency from the application.  So, I don't think freedesktop should
discourage the use of NX, but as there is no completely free implementation
of the whole system, it would be hard for any official freedesktop software
release to include pieces of it.

-keith

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