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TinyX: Small Featured X Server
- pvg 2y agoThread at the time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36498484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36498484
- st_goliath 2y agoWell, "at the time" is a funny way to put it. That thread is from 2023. The first commit in the repository is from 2013, importing the already existing source tree. I recall having played around with DSL/TCL (Damn Small Linux & Tiny Core Linux) around 2010 or so and IIRC they already had their minimalist X11-but-not-Xorg server even back then, which I found fascinating at the time. I'm pretty sure I took a curious peak at the source code back then, IIRC it simply didn't live in git yet (tarball and a few patches?). The XVesa code base that this is forked off of is of course much older.
- tmzt 2y agoAt one point I believe DSL used Kdrive which has a slightly different DDX and driver structure but the same DIX.
- tiffanyh 2y ago> While the original codebase is MIT, any changes here are GPLv3. What’s the argument on why to change to a less permissive license?
- wmf 2y agoUsually ideology. GNU/FSF people love switching software from permissive to copyleft.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoAll things strive
- account42 2y agoNot wanting to do free work for others that don't reciprocate is "ideology" now?
- glitchc 2y agoProtection against corporate interests taking over the project in the future.
- pantalaimon 2y agoWith that kind of project they should be happy for any kind of interest in the future.
- IncRnd 2y agoThe answer to your question is in the next sentence, "While the original codebase is MIT, any changes here are GPLv3. Supporting closed devices with this code is not a goal."
- rollcat 2y agoThat's the entire point of a permissive license. You grant other parties the right to do as they wish, given a very lax set of requirements (usually just attribution). Would you feel offended if someone only distributed a binary build with their changes, or even charge for that? That's literally what the permissive license is about. What may not be immediately obvious, is that it still favors the downstream developer to contribute their changes back; the network effect scales exponentially with the number of participants. Making the changes copyleft complicates the matter, as their copyright status may become less clear as further downstream contributors chip in. There's always some trade-off, but this is exactly what the MIT license permits. If it bothers you, you'd probably find yourself preferring copyleft anyway.
- eddieh 2y agoThere’s no argument for the change in the general case. There’s rationalizations, sure. But no euphemisms like “public”, “free software”, “copyleft”, make the change anything less than taking away a freedom and calling it “free as in speech”.
- immibis 2y agoIf you have the right to speak your mind and I have the right to blast an airhorn every time you open your mouth... ... and I actually do that ... ... do you actually have the right to speak? Maybe banning airhorns would increase speech rights.
- eddieh 2y agoActually, you don’t have that right. Most cities ban public nuisance noises such as blasting air horns. You’re mostly free to do things that do not harm others. If you don’t like my speaking you can and should just move along. Blasting an air horn is not only harming me it harms everyone around you. Whereby you are interfering with everyone else’s right to not have public nuisances. It isn’t remotely similar to what I’m saying anyway. The free software foundation has brainwashed y’all to think less freedom is more freedom. And yes, I will die on this hill. It isn’t my fault if you have an issue with objective reality.
- knowitnone 2y agoI think they want assistance with the project, not for corps to take it and build it without contributing back. It's why Linux has grown more feature/driver rich while others grow at a slower pace (no necessarily a bad thing).
- bmacho 2y agoThe dude that worked on it prefers GPL over MIT.
- Nab443 2y agoNot less permissive, just targeting the end user instead of the developer rights.
- observationist 2y agoStallman's principles should be directional - an orientation, aspirational, not something to cling to with bitter insistence. It's the equivalent of screaming "why can't we all just get along" into the Matrix. Copyleft isn't how the world works. MIT and Apache and liberal licenses liberate ideas for reuse and practical application in the real world. If you want your project to be a quirky curiosity visited and abandoned by people searching for some better solution for their problem, use copyleft. If you want your idea to make the world a better place, use permissive, liberal licensing and move on. Forking something from MIT to GPLv3 is disappointing, from this standpoint.
- kazinator 2y agoWhile I favor BSD and MIT licenses myself that's all I will use, obviously we've had very successful software that is copylefted. There are people who won't contribute to your program if it's BSD or MIT. There are those who won't contribute to your program if it's GPL. A program with any license is at risk of being abandoned as a quirky curiosity, if it, doh, is a quirky curiosity.
- knowitnone 2y agoso you don't use Linux?
- motorest 2y ago> Copyleft isn't how the world works. How do you explain the success of software projects such as the Linux kernel? > MIT and Apache and liberal licenses liberate ideas for reuse and practical application in the real world. No. The likes of MIT and Apache allow for royalty-free commercial use of third party software. Aka free labour. The likes of GPL arguably have a greater impact on the whole concept of reuse because they require consumers to also be reusable by third parties. It's ok if your goal is to just use someone else's projects for your own commercial benefit. I do that all the time. However, it's not right to try to frame it as something else.
- globular-toast 2y ago> Copyleft isn't how the world works. One way to think of copyleft is it neutralises copyright. Permissive licences do not do that. People who support free software do not believe software copyright should be part of the world.
- udev4096 2y ago[flagged]
- tchbnl 2y agoIt's stable and it works for me.
- mhd 2y agoWell, sadly NeWs isn't supported anymore.
- ulfbert_inc 2y agoIf it is good enough for OpenBSD it is good enough for me.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rollcat 2y agoWayland of course is the present and the future, Xorg receiving only the bare minimum of attention. But I believe that many technologies, protocols, and formats that were commonplace in late 90s/early 2000s are just here to stay forever: X11, BIOS/MBR, FAT32, 32-bit x86 PE, Win32, GTK2, Cocoa... The Linux kernel still runs static binaries built in mid-90s. Judging from the feature list, TinyX hits a very sweet spot for otherwise underpowered or obsolete machines. You can of course spend €50 and get a RasPi that can handle a more complex / demanding stack, but also you can take advantage of the spare power, or just appreciate the architectural simplicity.
- johnisgood 2y agoWayland still does not for work me for basic stuff though. I will make a list once I try it again but so far I have only experienced issues with it, no issues with Xorg. (And thus, I avoid anything Wayland.)
- rollcat 2y agoTrue, your mileage with Wayland will vary, depending on your HW, distro, compositor, etc. Xorg is more mature (check it), and also this just popped up in my news feed: <https://rubenerd.com/boring-tech-is-mature-not-old/ https://rubenerd.com/boring-tech-is-mature-not-old/> For better or worse, Wayland is where all of the attention is right now, and there already are systems (like Asahi Linux) where Xorg is unsupported. The world will continue moving forward, sticking with Xorg may prove more difficult over time, so TinyX may be of interest even if purely for the sake of continued maintenance.
- krupan 2y agoI like that take on boring tech, and a little like Oracle, I don't think X is boring. Wayland definitely isn't either, but I think it has potential.
- rollcat 2y agoWayland is both late and early. Late in the sense that OS X has had Quartz from the beginning, and Vista started the move to DWM; meanwhile the Linux community was patting itself on the back because Compiz looked cooler than either of those, and didn't see past the surface. X11 is not only an outdated design, it's also a security nightmare. Early because it's still a mixed bag, and kinda suffers from second system. It's a protocol rather than a library - while it's simpler than X11, it relies heavily on optional extensions for things such as screen capture or even "server" side decorations. Under X11, you could write a spartan-but-functional WM in a 100 lines of C. Under Wayland, a functional compositor needs roughly 50k lines; wlroots can handle most of that, but neither KDE or Gnome uses it, so effectively there's three parallel worlds, with varying level of support for different extensions. Early on, IMHO too much effort went into Weston (the "reference" implementation nobody cares about), and too little into building something like wlroots. It may take a while for the situation to settle.
- queuebert 2y agoCould an even more minimal X server simply render one application that was launched from the console? Or would that run into issues?
- Daegalus 2y agoOn the topic of the license, I find most small projects that use GPL suffer from delusions of grandeur. First to address the readme. Their goal for switch to GPL for closed devices is kind of pointless. For a closed device, they can still use it without modification. And even if they do modify it, how would you know. How would you prove it's your codebase they modified? The GPL does little to protect small projects. If they made money and got caught, they can just pay their way out of it. If they didn't make any money, well, no one would have probably found out until they they were a defunct company or the product was cancelled. Second, more on the delusions of grandeur. Let's be real, this project is a small project with very little chance to grow big. It might become the defacto X server for old tech, but I doubt it would be used for anything new. And even if it is, not for many. The GPL won't protect it because it's obscure. The GPL works for big high profile projects, like the Linux Kernel. It worked in the past because companies hadn't figured out a way around it, or that they can just ignore it and deal with the consequences later. They usually get away with it too, with little cost to them, as they have made their money. I personally avoid releasing any of my projects as GPL. Because the likelihood of any of my projects being huge is minimal, and if they go big, I can change the license then. Maybe a non open source license like the Fair Source License that then transitions to MIT or Apache after 1-2 years.
- rixed 2y agoThe GPL is not about becoming huge, it's about building a community around shared software. The goal is not to prevent Microsoft from stealing your software, it is to promote the idea amongst software authors and users that software should be free to modify and share and that there should be no distinction between users and authors; There is no such statement with the MIT. I believe this makes sense regardless of the size of the software.
- Daegalus 2y agoOk, I'll give you that argument, as I agree with a lot of it, but the authors are specifically using it as an anti-closed device/anti-corporate thing.