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

[Egbert Eich]

Mike A. Harris writes:
 > 
 > I don't discount that the methods used in NX to accomplish it's 
 > goals are good ideas.  Rather, I think that they are rather good 
 > ideas, which should be investigated more closely.
 > 
 > However the NX implementation itself is not useful as GPL source 
 > code to those working on X11 under an MIT license.
 > 

Right. At the moment this is a no issue as the technology lives
on a proxy server.  I was suggesting to review the technology
and see if it's worthwhile to integrate some parts of it into
the server. Gian Filippo replied to this basically saying that
the merit of keeping it separate is to avoid the introduction of
another complicated element to the server at a neglegtible cost
of performance. And he may be right.
On the other hand I've talked to him a while back about the license
issue and he didn't seem to be entirely opposed to relicense this
software should we find this useful.
He also expressed the same thing here on the list.

 > The usefulness of the software or the methods it uses to
 > accomplish it's goals are not what I'm bringing into question
 > however.  I'm just stating that the proprietary software
 > component built on top of it might be useful to some end users
 > out there as a solution, but that doesn't help the development
 > of improvements of X11 itself.  The GPL license of NX makes it's 

Right. But noone tried to sell you a proprietary piece of software.
However if we are permitted to take advantage of the non-propritary
pieces of this software we may actually benefit.
This has happened with other software for which proprietary pieces
exist. 'cups' is an example here.

 > own source code incompatible with being used directly in an X11 
 > implementation unless the authors of the implementation want to 
 > make their X11 GPL licensed.

I know. I did not suggest anything like that. I was suggesting to 
take a look at the technology and if we feel parts of it should
really live in the Xserver then we still can discuss the licenese
issue. Since Gian Filippo seems to own all the copyrights this
issue may be resolvable.

 > 
 > So while there are indeed things to be learned from NX, I don't 
 > consider it to be a godsend to X developmental issues, while it 
 > may indeed be fantastic for end users at this point.
 > 

Well,

a. How can you be so sure?
b. Does this justify your somewhat hostile reaction?


   Egbert.