glib dependency for the X Server

[Russell Shaw]

Dave Airlie wrote:
>>>Do we really want to continue to encourage closed X?
>>
>>X is more free if it isn't restricted by (L)GPL. If no one can sell closed
>>copies of it in embedded systems for money, then no one will be motivated
>>to maintain and improve it for diverse and/or limited hardware. Instead, it
>>will degenerate to being a slow bloated cpu and memory hog.
> 
> I'd thought I'd learned better than to join stupid crack threads, but wtf..
> 
> I'm not seeing a huge amount of contributing back from these closed
> copies used in embedded systems, so give me a reason why I should
> care? if people want to contribute back they will no matter what, if
> they don't want to they won't unless you kick their asses with a
> lawyer....
> 
> My main customer here uses Mesa/miniglx in a lot of projects, I'd
> guess if I wasn't involved the code would rarely make it back out the
> door into the Mesa tree because it is MIT licensed so why should they
> bother?

I only got interested in X for solving embedded problems and writing
custom tools. If X was only useable on desktop hardware, i wouldn't
be interested in looking at it or improving it. All the (L)GPL and
other free (Xt based etc) gui stuff i've studied is architecturally
and performance wise, very substandard imo, and i wouldn't want to
see any more of it finding its way into X.

The fact only *one* windowing system can be in control on a pc
forces anyone wanting to do any gui stuff to use that system.
Anyone can make improvements to their own closed X system binary,
but users will not install it on PCs if it breaks other things, and
cannot install patches/modules from other vendors.

If an improved X is released as a closed binary on some embedded system,
who cares? It is in the interest of the vendors doing that to put back
improvements into the public X source to minimize their patch maintenance
when X development starts diverging off into hyperspace needing a quad-CPU
graphic card to get useable performance.

The purpose of (L)GPL is to give more incentive to programmers to
contribute back work knowing that it won't be improved and sold in
closed binaries. The nature of one global X instance on a pc that
everything needs to be compatible with, fulfills that goal.

I don't care if any improvements i make get sold as improved closed
static binaries in an embedded system, because i can do the same myself
if i want to, which is more freedom than (L)GPL.

The problem with (L)GPL is that it lacks specific clauses for embedded systems.