[gentoo-amd64] Can I run a complete desktop remotely?

[gentoo-amd64] Can I run a complete desktop remotely?

[Mark Knecht]

Hi,
   Is it possible to run a complete Gnome desktop from a remote
location through ssh? I'm not talking about using vnc to watch a
remote desktop but actually run one remotely and only have it
displayed here.

Thanks,
Mark
-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Can I run a complete desktop remotely?

[Olivier Crête]

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Hi,

You have two choice, you can use Xvnc (its a pure-vnc X server). Or you
can use something like Xdmcp.

On Sat, 2007-26-05 at 12:07 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
> Hi,
>    Is it possible to run a complete Gnome desktop from a remote
> location through ssh? I'm not talking about using vnc to watch a
> remote desktop but actually run one remotely and only have it
> displayed here.
> 
> Thanks,
> Mark
-- 
Olivier Crête
tester@gentoo.org
Gentoo Developer

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Can I run a complete desktop remotely?

[Mark Knecht]

On 5/26/07, Olivier Crête <tester@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> You have two choice, you can use Xvnc (its a pure-vnc X server). Or you
> can use something like Xdmcp.
>
> On Sat, 2007-26-05 at 12:07 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
> > Hi,
> >    Is it possible to run a complete Gnome desktop from a remote
> > location through ssh? I'm not talking about using vnc to watch a
> > remote desktop but actually run one remotely and only have it
> > displayed here.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Mark
> --

Olivier and all others who responded:

Thanks for the info. As always I appreciate it. I have looked at the
links everyone provided but I think they are way over my head. I'm
looking for an end-user sort of solution here. Thanks in advance for
helping me.

The issue here, for me, is not running X apps on the remote machine. I
do that already. My dad, who is now 78 and happily running Gentoo
Linux for over 4 years now, gets by when he has an application problem
by asking me to log in and fix things with the app. For instance, when
I update Evolution or when he changed ISPs recently I often need to go
fix individual configuration items. I do that just running the app
over an SSH tunnel with X forwarding turned on. No problems other than
the speed.

The case I'm looking at now is that either he or my mom will tell me
something about what they are seeing their desktop, like a Gnome
launcher or some other thing, which isn't working correctly. I want to
see what they are seeing. Keep in mind I don't know which account this
is until they send me an email.

I understand I could do this with VNC. I've done that in the past with
my dad sitting at the machine. Unfortunately neither of them seems
comfortable starting applications like VNC and often I'm working on
this machine when they are not around or have gone to bed. What I want
to do is actually log in as one of them, start a Gnome session and see
their desktop as they would see it but displayed here 350 miles away
in a window on my machine.

I'm not *overly* worried about display speed. I understand it will be
slow. (Very slow...) I've dealt with that for years now. However I've
never been able to fix desktop launchers or configure the Gnome panel
for them without them running VNC which just doesn't work.

What I'm hoping to find is a simple, end user type description of how
to set up to run a remote session like this. I don't currently
understand all the technical aspect of these different technologies,
like XDMCP, etc., but I figure I'll learn as I go along. (As I always
have...) It didn't seem to me that any of the links so far addressed
this, or at least at a level that someone like me would understand.
However maybe I'm just not understanding the technologies well enough
yet to see the answer staring me in the face.

Anyway, the simpler the better for me.

Thanks,
Mark
--
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Can I run a complete desktop remotely?

[Peter Davoust]

Ok, well what I would do, don't know if this is what you're looking
for, I would edit /home/user/.autostart (.xinitrc?), or what have you,
and just add the command to start vnc. That way it would always be
running and no one would have to start anything. I'm not sure which
file it is, I don't know if .xinitrc is run by X server or if you can
throw some commands in there as well. Someone else can probably tell
you what it is better than I can.

-Peter

On 5/27/07, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/26/07, Olivier Crête <tester@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > You have two choice, you can use Xvnc (its a pure-vnc X server). Or you
> > can use something like Xdmcp.
> >
> > On Sat, 2007-26-05 at 12:07 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >    Is it possible to run a complete Gnome desktop from a remote
> > > location through ssh? I'm not talking about using vnc to watch a
> > > remote desktop but actually run one remotely and only have it
> > > displayed here.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Mark
> > --
>
> Olivier and all others who responded:
>
> Thanks for the info. As always I appreciate it. I have looked at the
> links everyone provided but I think they are way over my head. I'm
> looking for an end-user sort of solution here. Thanks in advance for
> helping me.
>
> The issue here, for me, is not running X apps on the remote machine. I
> do that already. My dad, who is now 78 and happily running Gentoo
> Linux for over 4 years now, gets by when he has an application problem
> by asking me to log in and fix things with the app. For instance, when
> I update Evolution or when he changed ISPs recently I often need to go
> fix individual configuration items. I do that just running the app
> over an SSH tunnel with X forwarding turned on. No problems other than
> the speed.
>
> The case I'm looking at now is that either he or my mom will tell me
> something about what they are seeing their desktop, like a Gnome
> launcher or some other thing, which isn't working correctly. I want to
> see what they are seeing. Keep in mind I don't know which account this
> is until they send me an email.
>
> I understand I could do this with VNC. I've done that in the past with
> my dad sitting at the machine. Unfortunately neither of them seems
> comfortable starting applications like VNC and often I'm working on
> this machine when they are not around or have gone to bed. What I want
> to do is actually log in as one of them, start a Gnome session and see
> their desktop as they would see it but displayed here 350 miles away
> in a window on my machine.
>
> I'm not *overly* worried about display speed. I understand it will be
> slow. (Very slow...) I've dealt with that for years now. However I've
> never been able to fix desktop launchers or configure the Gnome panel
> for them without them running VNC which just doesn't work.
>
> What I'm hoping to find is a simple, end user type description of how
> to set up to run a remote session like this. I don't currently
> understand all the technical aspect of these different technologies,
> like XDMCP, etc., but I figure I'll learn as I go along. (As I always
> have...) It didn't seem to me that any of the links so far addressed
> this, or at least at a level that someone like me would understand.
> However maybe I'm just not understanding the technologies well enough
> yet to see the answer staring me in the face.
>
> Anyway, the simpler the better for me.
>
> Thanks,
> Mark
> --
> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Can I run a complete desktop remotely?

[Richard Freeman]

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Mark Knecht wrote:
> What I want
> to do is actually log in as one of them, start a Gnome session and see
> their desktop as they would see it but displayed here 350 miles away
> in a window on my machine.

Ah, what you want is remote framebuffer support.

kde-base/krfb will do the trick, and I know there is a gnome equivalent 
(but I don't know what it is called).  It uses vnc, and it essentially 
runs as a daemon if you configure it correctly.

I'm not sure where it is, but I'm guessing somewhere in the gnome 
control panel you can enable it.  Then you can connect to display :0 and 
see whatever is on the console.  Note that I'm not sure if you'll see 
anything using direct hardware rendering (like mplayer-using-xv/etc). 
And as you expect it is a bit slow.


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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Can I run a complete desktop remotely?

[YoYo Siska]

Mark Knecht wrote:
> 
> Olivier and all others who responded:
> 
> Thanks for the info. As always I appreciate it. I have looked at the
> links everyone provided but I think they are way over my head. I'm
> looking for an end-user sort of solution here. Thanks in advance for
> helping me.
> 
> The issue here, for me, is not running X apps on the remote machine. I
> do that already. My dad, who is now 78 and happily running Gentoo
> Linux for over 4 years now, gets by when he has an application problem
> by asking me to log in and fix things with the app. For instance, when
> I update Evolution or when he changed ISPs recently I often need to go
> fix individual configuration items. I do that just running the app
> over an SSH tunnel with X forwarding turned on. No problems other than
> the speed.
> 

Hi,
just another hint beside the  others:

I use x11vnc for such scenarios: I ssh into the machine as the user
running the X session, start up  x11vnc -display :0, and then just run
vncviewer remote_host:0  on my computer

There are a few things to note however: the x11vnc must be able to
connect to the xserver (I mean authentication through XAUTH)
with KDM (regardless of the session you choose, just the display
manager) it just worked for me, gdm may be worse and you may have to set
up correct XAUTHORITY

If the user has not logged in already  (there's the kdm/gdm login screen
on the remote computer still) you _have_ to set the XAUTH. With kdm the
xauth file is  /var/run/xauth/A:${DISPLAY}-some_random_chars, accesible
only from root. You have to run the x11vnc as root with the xauth file,
for example:
x11vnc -display :0 -auth /var/run/xauth/A:0-crR0kF


There also used to be directly a module for the X server that you could
load and just connect to the screen anytime with vncviewer without the
need to run x11vnc a to play with xauth...  But I played with it a long
time ago, it was a seperate module etc... I remember vaguely that it was
either included in standard xorg or something.. but I don't really know



OK, after I wrote this I found
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Use_VNC_to_connect_to_existing_X_Sessions
;)))

there's the x11vnc way (with a way to set up kde to always start it, and
the locations of xauth files for gdm, ... ;), and also  the X extension
way (you just need to emerge vnc with server use flag, and it should
install the vnc module for Xserver, configuration is on the wiki page)


yoyo
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Can I run a complete desktop remotely?

[Aleksey Kunitskiy]

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On Saturday 26 May 2007 22:07, Mark Knecht wrote:
> Hi,
>    Is it possible to run a complete Gnome desktop from a remote
> location through ssh? I'm not talking about using vnc to watch a
> remote desktop but actually run one remotely and only have it
> displayed here.
>
> Thanks,
> Mark

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=72893

-- 
best regards,
Aleksey V. Kunitskiy

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Can I run a complete desktop remotely?

[Conway S. Smith]

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On Sat, 26 May 2007 12:07:02 -0700
"Mark Knecht" <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>    Is it possible to run a complete Gnome desktop from a remote
> location through ssh? I'm not talking about using vnc to watch a
> remote desktop but actually run one remotely and only have it
> displayed here.
> 
> Thanks,
> Mark

Yes; the X Windowing System was designed as both a display and a
networking protocol.  The X Server is where the video is displayed &
where the input (keyboard, mouse) comes from; the X clients are the
program(s) that are being displayed.  Any or all of the X clients,
including the Desktop Environment / Window Manager, can be run on the
same host as the Server, or on remote hosts (as long as the remote
hosts have permission to access the X Server).

SSH also includes functionality to allow X11 forwarding through the
encrypted SSH connection.

Hopefully helpful links:
http://www.vanemery.com/Linux/XoverSSH/X-over-SSH2.html
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XDMCP-HOWTO/
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_X-forwarding
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System


Good luck,
Conway S. Smith

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Can I run a complete desktop remotely?

[Simon Cooper]

As a side point, would it be possible to run an accelerated X client 
with the nvidia drivers? eg, have a standard X server, and the X client 
uses the nvidia drivers - would that result in a hardware accelerated 
session (given a fast enough network)?

Conway S. Smith wrote:
> On Sat, 26 May 2007 12:07:02 -0700
> "Mark Knecht" <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>    Is it possible to run a complete Gnome desktop from a remote
>> location through ssh? I'm not talking about using vnc to watch a
>> remote desktop but actually run one remotely and only have it
>> displayed here.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Mark
> 
> Yes; the X Windowing System was designed as both a display and a
> networking protocol.  The X Server is where the video is displayed &
> where the input (keyboard, mouse) comes from; the X clients are the
> program(s) that are being displayed.  Any or all of the X clients,
> including the Desktop Environment / Window Manager, can be run on the
> same host as the Server, or on remote hosts (as long as the remote
> hosts have permission to access the X Server).
> 
> SSH also includes functionality to allow X11 forwarding through the
> encrypted SSH connection.
> 
> Hopefully helpful links:
> http://www.vanemery.com/Linux/XoverSSH/X-over-SSH2.html
> http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XDMCP-HOWTO/
> http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_X-forwarding
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System
> 
> 
> Good luck,
> Conway S. Smith
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Can I run a complete desktop remotely?

[Conway S. Smith]

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On Sat, 26 May 2007 21:29:52 +0100
Simon Cooper <thecoop@runbox.com> wrote:
> As a side point, would it be possible to run an accelerated X client 
> with the nvidia drivers? eg, have a standard X server, and the X
> client uses the nvidia drivers - would that result in a hardware
> accelerated session (given a fast enough network)?
> 

No, the hardware acceleration has to be on the X Server (the display)
side.  But the client side can take advantage of the server's hardware
acceleration, even if the client doesn't have hardware of its own.  The
X-over-SSH2 link from my earlier email talks about running TuxRacer on
a host w/out hardware acceleration, displayed over a network on a X
Server that did have acceleration.  There is a very noticeable
framerate drop due to the network & compression/decompression &
encryption/decryption overhead, but in the TuxRace example he does call
it "playable".  I dunno that I'd agree w/ that, unless you have both a
really fast network & really fast processors on both the client &
server.


Conway S. Smith

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Can I run a complete desktop remotely?

[Nuitari]

>> Hi,
>>    Is it possible to run a complete Gnome desktop from a remote
>> location through ssh? I'm not talking about using vnc to watch a
>> remote desktop but actually run one remotely and only have it
>> displayed here.
>
> SSH also includes functionality to allow X11 forwarding through the
> encrypted SSH connection.

You'll need a fast (100mbps+) lan for it, even with the ssh compression 
enabled.

VNC is a much more efficient protocol then X11 for remote desktop.
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[gentoo-amd64] Re: Can I run a complete desktop remotely?

[Duncan]

Nuitari <nuitari@melchior.nuitari.net> posted
Pine.LNX.4.64.0705261746390.9042@melchior.nuitari.net, excerpted below, on
 Sat, 26 May 2007 17:47:36 -0400:

>>>    Is it possible to run a complete Gnome desktop from a remote
>>> location through ssh? I'm not talking about using vnc to watch a
>>> remote desktop but actually run one remotely and only have it
>>> displayed here.
>>
>> SSH also includes functionality to allow X11 forwarding through the
>> encrypted SSH connection.
> 
> You'll need a fast (100mbps+) lan for it, even with the ssh compression
> enabled.

I've not done it and don't know the details of the protocol, so can't 
really argue from the practical end, but if it requires that, how'd they 
ever do it back in the day, before XFree86, let alone xorg?  Back then, 
10Mbps Ethernet would have been fast, 2 Mbps would have been standard, 
let alone dialup.  Sure, screen sizes were smaller back then, but that 
much?

BTW, from what I've read, it's generally 2D and possibly unaccelerated 3D 
only.  Accelerated 3D generally makes use of DRI or other direct 
rendering client to hardware, not over the socket, so not over the net.  
As I said, tho, I've no first hand experience, so I'm just going by what 
I've read.  It's also possible that AIGLX (Accelerated Indirect GLX), a 
relatively new development, might have changed that.  If so and that's 
what you were talking about, yeah, I can imagine /that/ might take some 
bandwidth.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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[gentoo-amd64] Re: Can I run a complete desktop remotely?

[Duncan]

Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> posted pan.2007.05.26.22.20.34@cox.net,
excerpted below, on  Sat, 26 May 2007 22:20:34 +0000:

> I've not done it and don't know the details of the protocol, so can't
> really argue from the practical end, but if it requires that, how'd they
> ever do it back in the day, before XFree86, let alone xorg?  Back then,
> 10Mbps Ethernet would have been fast, 2 Mbps would have been standard,
> let alone dialup.  Sure, screen sizes were smaller back then, but that
> much?

OK, so I see the answer... single apps with smaller windows, not the 
entire desktop run remotely.  And Conway's point about compression 
sometimes slowing things down if the CPUs are slow compared to the 
network makes sense as well.  CPU speeds (and now cores) have increased 
faster than network speeds, I believe, tho I've not done the math on 
actual years.  The network may well have been fast enough for the CPUs, 
back then.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Can I run a complete desktop remotely?

[Conway S. Smith]

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On Sat, 26 May 2007 17:47:36 -0400 (EDT)
Nuitari <nuitari@melchior.nuitari.net> wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>    Is it possible to run a complete Gnome desktop from a remote
> >> location through ssh? I'm not talking about using vnc to watch a
> >> remote desktop but actually run one remotely and only have it
> >> displayed here.
> >
> > SSH also includes functionality to allow X11 forwarding through the
> > encrypted SSH connection.
> 
> You'll need a fast (100mbps+) lan for it, even with the ssh
> compression enabled.
> 

True (although I'd say 10mbps can be fast enough, depending on how
much other network traffic there is), but with a fast enough network &
slow enough processors, it can be better NOT to use compression, as
compression requires CPU time on both sides of the connection, possibly
adding more latency than would be saved by lower data transfer on the
network.

> VNC is a much more efficient protocol then X11 for remote desktop.

For running a complete Gnome desktop session, I'd agree VNC is usually
better.  But for running individual remote programs that use smaller
windows, X can be pretty efficient.  And there's other advantages X has
over VNC, like hardware accelerated graphics.


Conway S. Smith

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Can I run a complete desktop remotely?

[Joerg Gollnick]

Hi,
my experience is that X11 over ssh performs well for 2D in a 100 Mbit LAN 
Network. If you have a WAN between X Server and X Client you get much more 
latency, so that this is noticable to a normal user. If you do this only for 
remote support even a fast WAN (2 MBit) link is with waiting time usesable.
If you access a remote machine on a regular base outside the LAN, you have the 
choice: open source solutions VNC and FreeNX or closed source solution (Sun 
Global Desktop / Citrix ...).
If you need a easy to install solution then use VNC. It works nearly out of 
the box (even if twm is not everbodys first choice) VNC can deal with ssh 
Portforwarding, if the VNC Server is not directly reachable from the client.
I played years ago with NX Server ( not FreeNX) over a WAN. It worked well and 
was fairly useable.  They claim to be more efficient then VNC, as the NX 
protocol is interweaved with the X11 protocol itself.
Best regards Jörg


Am Sonntag 27 Mai 2007 schrieb Conway S. Smith:
> On Sat, 26 May 2007 17:47:36 -0400 (EDT)
> Nuitari <nuitari@melchior.nuitari.net> wrote:
> > >> Hi,
> > >>    Is it possible to run a complete Gnome desktop from a remote
> > >> location through ssh? I'm not talking about using vnc to watch a
> > >> remote desktop but actually run one remotely and only have it
> > >> displayed here.
> > >
> > > SSH also includes functionality to allow X11 forwarding through the
> > > encrypted SSH connection.
> > 
> > You'll need a fast (100mbps+) lan for it, even with the ssh
> > compression enabled.
> > 
> 
> True (although I'd say 10mbps can be fast enough, depending on how
> much other network traffic there is), but with a fast enough network &
> slow enough processors, it can be better NOT to use compression, as
> compression requires CPU time on both sides of the connection, possibly
> adding more latency than would be saved by lower data transfer on the
> network.
> 
> > VNC is a much more efficient protocol then X11 for remote desktop.
> 
> For running a complete Gnome desktop session, I'd agree VNC is usually
> better.  But for running individual remote programs that use smaller
> windows, X can be pretty efficient.  And there's other advantages X has
> over VNC, like hardware accelerated graphics.
> 
> 
> Conway S. Smith
> 


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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Can I run a complete desktop remotely?

[Richard Freeman]

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Joerg Gollnick wrote:
> I played years ago with NX Server ( not FreeNX) over a WAN. It worked well and 
> was fairly useable.  They claim to be more efficient then VNC, as the NX 
> protocol is interweaved with the X11 protocol itself.
> Best regards Jörg
> 

I gave up on freeNX on amd64 a while ago - it was just too hard to keep 
the thing working.  It was faster, but it was a real mess getting it 
working at all (at the time it didn't support 64-bit).

Perhaps things have changed...

I'm using tightvnc with Xvnc and it works just fine for remote access to 
my machine.  But don't plan on games or anything like that - many games 
refuse to launch if they're 3D.


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[gentoo-amd64] Sun and GPL

[Isidore Ducasse]

le Sun, 27 May 2007 08:48:11 +0200
Joerg Gollnick <gentoo102004@joerg.in-berlin.de> a écrit:
[ Sujet: Re: [gentoo-amd64] Can I run a complete desktop remotely? ]

> If you access a remote machine on a regular base outside the LAN, you have the 
> choice: open source solutions VNC and FreeNX or closed source solution (Sun 
> Global Desktop / Citrix ...).

I've heard that Sun recently released the Java platform under GPL, and
that all of their softs are going to follow in a near future. I've synced portage 2 days ago and dev-java/sun-jre-bin is still licensed against dlj-1.1 . Does anybody know how long it can take to have the license changed? Will it change at the occasion of a new release or is it applicable with the current version? Does it mean we'll have a 64-bit java web browser plugin some day?

$ eselect java-nsplugin list
Available 32-bit Java browser plugins
  [1]   emul-linux-x86-java-1.5  current
Available 64-bit Java browser plugins
 
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[gentoo-amd64] Re: Sun and GPL

[Duncan]

Isidore Ducasse <ducasse.isidore@gmail.com> posted
20070527131103.770b71c6@Bazaar, excerpted below, on  Sun, 27 May 2007
13:11:03 +0200:

> I've heard that Sun recently released the Java platform under GPL, and
> that all of their softs are going to follow in a near future.

Not necessarily (or likely) /all/ their software, but significant parts 
of it.  OpenSolaris is currently CDDL, which /is/ OSI approved as a real 
"open" license, but was designed in part deliberately to be GPLv2 
incompatible.  Apparently, they weren't interested in Linux "stealing" 
their technologies, which they thought would happen if they made it GPLv2 
compatible.

They ARE considering dual-licensing Solaris under GPLv3, however, which 
they've been working closely with the FSF on.  Of course that's not a 
given until it's out, but it'd definitely widen the interest base (I for 
one may well be interested, especially if Linux stays GPLv2 only).

Of course Linus and the other kernel devs were originally very much 
against early GPLv3 drafts.  Linus at least has apparently changed his 
mind with the later ones, but again, we'll have to see, and it would take 
nearly all of the big contributors current and past agreeing for it to be 
practical, and even then there'd likely be a period of several years 
where it was dual licensed v2 and v3 until all those who couldn't be 
reached or didn't agree could have their v2 code written out of it.  
Eventually, the v2 side could be dropped, after all the v2 only code was 
gone.

But they have other software as well.  Java, however, you are right, 
GPLv2 is what they've announced, but again, it's taking some time.  Much 
of it is now, but not the complete stack.

> I've
> synced portage 2 days ago and dev-java/sun-jre-bin is still licensed
> against dlj-1.1 . Does anybody know how long it can take to have the
> license changed? Will it change at the occasion of a new release or is
> it applicable with the current version? Does it mean we'll have a 64-bit
> java web browser plugin some day?

What Gentoo is doing, from what I've seen based on some of the smaller 
Java packages, is eliminating the -bin version and switching to a 
standard (for Gentoo) sources based ebuild.  I've not followed Java /
that/ closely as it hasn't been open source, and I won't install it until 
it is, but I've been following the developments here as I come across 
them.  The Gentoo Java devs are working on it, but as I said, I don't 
believe enough of the entire Java infrastructure has been released as GPL 
yet to do the entire thing as sources.  Even after it has, it'll take 
several months as experimental ebuilds in the Java overlay (emerge layman 
and read up on using it, if interested), before it is considered stable 
enough to release into the main tree, even as ~arch.  Then it'll be in 
~arch for awhile, while any bugs the ~arch users find being worked out, 
before it makes it to stable.

So, I'm not /real/ close to things, talk to devs on the Java herd if you 
want real detail, but an intelligent guess based on the above that I know 
is that it'll be several months, likely late this year or early next, 
before full source based Sun blessed Java is in the main tree, almost 
certainly before it reaches stable.


-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

-- 
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Sun and GPL

[Isidore Ducasse]

le Sun, 27 May 2007 23:32:49 +0000 (UTC)
Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> a écrit:

> Not necessarily (or likely) /all/ their software, but significant parts 
> of it.  OpenSolaris is currently CDDL, which /is/ OSI approved as a real 
> "open" license, but was designed in part deliberately to be GPLv2 
> incompatible.  Apparently, they weren't interested in Linux "stealing" 
> their technologies, which they thought would happen if they made it GPLv2 
> compatible.

Solaris' dev team had diverging points of view about GPL being relevant for a private firm as Sun. Now it looks like there was room for a single conception over there.

> They ARE considering dual-licensing Solaris under GPLv3, however, which 
> they've been working closely with the FSF on.  Of course that's not a 
> given until it's out, but it'd definitely widen the interest base (I for 
> one may well be interested, especially if Linux stays GPLv2 only).

You mean the bare kernel, right? Solaris' kernel could be an alternative to linux? Is the latter really different from the *BSD's? I've installed a NetBSD on my machine "for fun" recently (tho I switched back to using my good'ol gentoo, can't get used to anything else now. pkgsrc looks like a sympathetic old auntie); it appears to practice monolithic kernel. What would be different in running a GPLv3 kernel? I've read about the anti-DRM part of it; is there some other reason you/we could be interested in it?

BTW isn't there a technical issue licensing a single version of a soft against two incompatible licenses? Or did you mean dual-licensing GPLv2 and GPLv3?

> Of course Linus and the other kernel devs were originally very much 
> against early GPLv3 drafts.

Is it a matter of diverging positions towards industrial partners/users?

> The Gentoo Java devs are working on it, but as I said, I don't 
> believe enough of the entire Java infrastructure has been released as GPL 
> yet to do the entire thing as sources.  Even after it has, it'll take 
> several months as experimental ebuilds in the Java overlay (emerge layman 
> and read up on using it, if interested)

Ok! Does anyone know the difference between the java-overlay and the java-gcj-overlay?
--
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Sun and GPL

[Wil Reichert]

On 5/27/07, Isidore Ducasse <ducasse.isidore@gmail.com> wrote:
> le Sun, 27 May 2007 23:32:49 +0000 (UTC)
> Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> a écrit:
>
> > Not necessarily (or likely) /all/ their software, but significant parts
> > of it.  OpenSolaris is currently CDDL, which /is/ OSI approved as a real
> > "open" license, but was designed in part deliberately to be GPLv2
> > incompatible.  Apparently, they weren't interested in Linux "stealing"
> > their technologies, which they thought would happen if they made it GPLv2
> > compatible.
>
> Solaris' dev team had diverging points of view about GPL being relevant for a private firm as Sun. Now it looks like there was room for a single conception over there.
>
> > They ARE considering dual-licensing Solaris under GPLv3, however, which
> > they've been working closely with the FSF on.  Of course that's not a
> > given until it's out, but it'd definitely widen the interest base (I for
> > one may well be interested, especially if Linux stays GPLv2 only).
>
> You mean the bare kernel, right? Solaris' kernel could be an alternative to linux? Is the latter really different from the *BSD's? I've installed a NetBSD on my machine "for fun" recently (tho I switched back to using my good'ol gentoo, can't get used to anything else now. pkgsrc looks like a sympathetic old auntie); it appears to practice monolithic kernel. What would be different in running a GPLv3 kernel? I've read about the anti-DRM part of it; is there some other reason you/we could be interested in it?
>
> BTW isn't there a technical issue licensing a single version of a soft against two incompatible licenses? Or did you mean dual-licensing GPLv2 and GPLv3?
>
> > Of course Linus and the other kernel devs were originally very much
> > against early GPLv3 drafts.
>
> Is it a matter of diverging positions towards industrial partners/users?
>
> > The Gentoo Java devs are working on it, but as I said, I don't
> > believe enough of the entire Java infrastructure has been released as GPL
> > yet to do the entire thing as sources.  Even after it has, it'll take
> > several months as experimental ebuilds in the Java overlay (emerge layman
> > and read up on using it, if interested)
>
> Ok! Does anyone know the difference between the java-overlay and the java-gcj-overlay?
> --
> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

The thing I've wondered about GPL'ing java, is when do we finally get
a native 64 bit browser plugin?

Wil
--
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Sun and GPL

[Naga]

On Monday 28 May 2007 05:42:25 Wil Reichert wrote:
> The thing I've wondered about GPL'ing java, is when do we finally get
> a native 64 bit browser plugin?

++

I guess since M$ announced that Vista will be the last <64bit system they ship 
there will be one sooner rather then later.

-- 
Naga
-- 
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Sun and GPL

[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.]

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On Sunday 27 May 2007, Isidore Ducasse <ducasse.isidore@gmail.com> wrote 
about 'Re: [gentoo-amd64]  Re: Sun and GPL':
> le Sun, 27 May 2007 23:32:49 +0000 (UTC)
> Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> a écrit:
> > They ARE considering dual-licensing Solaris under GPLv3, however,
> > which they've been working closely with the FSF on.  Of course that's
> > not a given until it's out, but it'd definitely widen the interest
> > base (I for one may well be interested, especially if Linux stays
> > GPLv2 only).
>
> You mean the bare kernel, right? Solaris' kernel could be an alternative
> to linux?

Solaris' kernel *is* an alternative to Linux.  It's available under an OSI 
license in at least three distributions (including the one from Sun).

> Is the latter really different from the *BSD's?

From what I understand, yes.  They both have the old-skool Unix flavor, 
that reminds you that GNU really is *not* Unix, but their feature sets and 
userland are very different.

> it appears to practice monolithic
> kernel.

IIRC, that's correct about all the *BSDs and Solaris.

> What would be different in running a GPLv3 kernel? I've read 
> about the anti-DRM part of it; is there some other reason you/we could
> be interested in it?

The anti-DRM stuff has been scaled back quite a bit in the last draft.  As 
is proper, it no longer prevents the kernel from being part of 
an "effective content protection mechanism" or otherwise restricting how 
GPLv3 licensed software is *used*.  It does still prevent a distributor 
from giving you something you could theoretically modify but disallowing 
the use of modified versions in the same context.  (Or, at least it 
tries.)

> BTW isn't there a technical issue licensing a single version of a soft
> against two incompatible licenses?

No.  The QPL is quite incompatible with the GPL and Qt has been 
dual-licensed for some time under their disjunction.  There's very few 
technical issues involved with licensing at all, anyway.  "Is a kernel 
module a derivative work of the kernel?" and "Does dynamic linking against 
(e.g.) readline produce a derivative work of readline?" are /legal/ 
issues, not technical ones.  For the record the accepted answers right now 
are: "Yes" (per the kernel hackers -- making fglrx and nvidia kernel 
modules impossible to legally distribute) and "Yes" (per the FSF -- 
although it doesn't matter much since that work is never distributed)

> Or did you mean dual-licensing GPLv2 
> and GPLv3?

FWIW, these will be incompatible.  The additional restrictions the GPLv3 
places on distributors w.r.t. DRM are not allowed by strict reading of the 
GPLv2 and the GPLv2 doesn't allow additional restrictions to be added.  It 
is harder to argue that w.r.t. software patents, since the GPLv2 does 
contain a section the FSF claims is an implicit patent licence.

Still, dual-licensing under incompatible licenses is fine and I think many 
(but maybe not most) developers that currently license their code under 
GPLv2 will be willing to license under the GPLv3 as well (or instead).

> > Of course Linus and the other kernel devs were originally very much
> > against early GPLv3 drafts.
>
> Is it a matter of diverging positions towards industrial partners/users?

The problems Linus' had with early drafts were two-fold:
1) Early drafts has usage restrictions, although the license didn't have to 
be accepted to use what was covered.  Usage restrictions violate the DFSG 
and the Free Software Definition.  Also, the way the license was worded 
your usage wasn't restricted until you tried to distribute, which is just 
odd.
2) Linus had a fundamental misunderstanding of the legal terms involved and 
believed strongly that using the GPLv3 would require any distributor make 
use of PKI to disclose their private keys.  In particular, he was under 
the impression that packages signed with GPG keys (like Debian uses as a 
security layer) would require they publish the key used for signing.

It seems the license has been fixed on both counts.  The usage restrictions 
have been dropped, and the remaining text concerning DRM has been changed 
to mean the same thing while being clearer to laypersons.  (And clarity to 
laypersons is very important; developers are more likely to use a license 
they can read and understand themselves.)

-- 
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.                     ,= ,-_-. =. 
bss03@volumehost.net                      ((_/)o o(\_))
ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy           `-'(. .)`-' 
http://iguanasuicide.org/                      \_/     

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Sun and GPL

[Richard Freeman]

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Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
> On Sunday 27 May 2007, Isidore Ducasse <ducasse.isidore@gmail.com> wrote 
> about 'Re: [gentoo-amd64]  Re: Sun and GPL':
>> Or did you mean dual-licensing GPLv2 
>> and GPLv3?
> 
> 
> Still, dual-licensing under incompatible licenses is fine and I think many 
> (but maybe not most) developers that currently license their code under 
> GPLv2 will be willing to license under the GPLv3 as well (or instead).
> 

Note that while you can dual-license on ANY licenses you want (say the 
MS EULA and the GPLv3, for example), you can't just change licenses 
(even to add a new one) without the permission of the copyright holder.

So, Duncan's idea of dual-licensing the kernel under GPL v2/v3 until all 
bits of kernel code written by non-agreeing parties are removed would 
not work.

The issue isn't one of "adding restrictions", but basic copyright law. 
Distributing copyrighted software is illegal - unless you have a 
license.  The copyright holder gets to pick the license.  I can't take 
my copy of MS Windows and decide to dual-license it as BSD, although 
Microsoft could (assuming they fully own the copyrights).   In the same 
way, Linus can't just release the whole kernel as GPL v2/v3 unless all 
the copyright holders agree.

He probably could make it dual license on a module-by-module basis. 
Some modules would be GPLv2, and some would be GPL v2/v3 (both have to 
be supported to allow linking with GPLv2 code).  Other GPLv3 projects 
could then borrow code from the dual-licensed modules, although those 
modules could not borrow code from GPL v3 projects, as they have to 
retain the v2 license.  In practice none of the benefits of v3 would be 
available until the whole module is cleaned of v2-only code, at which 
point they could drop v2 and be v3-clean (and hopefully they'll make it 
v3+ this time).

Things are much cleaner for the FSF - they hold the copyrights on all 
their code, so they can license things any way they want.  That requires 
a bit of trust to work, and I'm not sure it is the best model.  Sure, 
with RS in charge I'm not worried, but nobody lives forever...

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Sun and GPL

[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.]

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On Monday 28 May 2007, Richard Freeman <rich@thefreemanclan.net> wrote 
about 'Re: [gentoo-amd64]  Re: Sun and GPL':
> Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
> > On Sunday 27 May 2007, Isidore Ducasse <ducasse.isidore@gmail.com>
> > wrote
> > about 'Re: [gentoo-amd64]  Re: Sun and GPL':
> Note that while you can dual-license on ANY licenses you want (say the
> MS EULA and the GPLv3, for example), you can't just change licenses
> (even to add a new one) without the permission of the copyright holder.

Yes, I didn't mean to imply otherwise.

> So, Duncan's idea of dual-licensing the kernel under GPL v2/v3 until all
> bits of kernel code written by non-agreeing parties are removed would
> not work.

Right, but Linus could take the stance that all new submission have to be 
licenced (to him) under GPLv2/GPLv3 and then one there's no GPLv2-only 
code left, release a kernel under GPLv3.  Until the point where there's no 
GPLv2 only code, Linus could only release the whole work under GPLv2, but 
everyone would know the transition was in the works.

> Things are much cleaner for the FSF - they hold the copyrights on all
> their code, so they can license things any way they want.

Things will also be nicer under the GPLv3, because they've extended 
optional "or any greater version published by the FSF" to be an 
optional "or any license approved by <foo>" where <foo> could be Linus 
Torvalds, X.org, or the Gentoo Foundation.

> That requires 
> a bit of trust to work, and I'm not sure it is the best model.  Sure,
> with RS in charge I'm not worried, but nobody lives forever...

Worst case scenario you fork from the last acceptably licensed version, so 
as long as the present license is perpetual and non-revocable then you are 
fine.  IIRC, the GPLv2 is perpetual but revocable, but only if you violate 
it (for ANY content) in the first place.

-- 
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.                     ,= ,-_-. =. 
bss03@volumehost.net                      ((_/)o o(\_))
ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy           `-'(. .)`-' 
http://iguanasuicide.org/                      \_/     

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Sun and GPL

[robert burrell donkin]

On 5/28/07, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. <bss03@volumehost.net> wrote:
> On Monday 28 May 2007, Richard Freeman <rich@thefreemanclan.net> wrote

<snip>

> > That requires
> > a bit of trust to work, and I'm not sure it is the best model.  Sure,
> > with RS in charge I'm not worried, but nobody lives forever...
>
> Worst case scenario you fork from the last acceptably licensed version, so
> as long as the present license is perpetual and non-revocable then you are
> fine.  IIRC, the GPLv2 is perpetual but revocable, but only if you violate
> it (for ANY content) in the first place.

FSF is a charity (see http://www.fsf.org/about)

even if RMS dies this will not effect it's chartered aims

- robert
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[gentoo-amd64] Re: Sun and GPL

[Duncan]

"Boyd Stephen Smith Jr." <bss03@volumehost.net> posted
200705280542.32246.bss03@volumehost.net, excerpted below, on  Mon, 28 May
2007 05:42:32 -0500:

>> So, Duncan's idea of dual-licensing the kernel under GPL v2/v3 until
>> all bits of kernel code written by non-agreeing parties are removed
>> would not work.
> 
> Right, but Linus could take the stance that all new submission have to
> be licenced (to him) under GPLv2/GPLv3 and then one there's no
> GPLv2-only code left, release a kernel under GPLv3.  Until the point
> where there's no GPLv2 only code, Linus could only release the whole
> work under GPLv2, but everyone would know the transition was in the
> works.

That's basically what I had in mind, yes.  Only I (inadvertently) took a 
logical shortcut while explaining it, and Richard obviously didn't follow 
me when I veered off.  =8^\  That's the whole reason it couldn't simply 
be made GPLv3 in an instant, however.  New code (and presumably the old 
code from all currently active contributors who agreed and continued to 
contribute) would instantly be dual-licensed, so it could use the old 
GPLv2 only code with the GPLv2 license, while the GPLv3 license remained 
in place but basically unused until all the GPLv2 only code was removed, 
at which point the GPLv2 dual license could be dropped off the new code 
as well (tho anyone wanting it could get it under GPLv2 could get it 
under that last dual licensed snapshot, until further new GPLv3 only code 
was added, anyway).  Finally, the kernel was GPLv2 and later for quite 
some time, the GPLv2 only being a relatively new development as well.  
Thus, anything in the last GPL2 or later snapshot could immediately be 
upgraded to GPLv2/v3 as well.  All told, within a few months, the large 
majority could be dual-licensed.  It's just that last 20, 10, 5, 2, 1%, 
as an increasing focus is placed on the issue, that's the sticking point, 
and that could ultimately cause the switchover to take five years or so.

Still, it's doable, just over some significant time and with some 
substantial effort required.

Thanks for pointing that out, Richard, and Boyd for clarifying what I 
meant.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Sun and GPL

[Hemmann, Volker Armin]

On Montag, 28. Mai 2007, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:

>
> Things will also be nicer under the GPLv3, because they've extended
> optional "or any greater version published by the FSF" to be an
> optional "or any license approved by <foo>" where <foo> could be Linus
> Torvalds, X.org, or the Gentoo Foundation.

Am I the only one who sees this as THE invitation to a chaotic licence-hell?
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Sun and GPL

[Nuitari]

>> Things will also be nicer under the GPLv3, because they've extended
>> optional "or any greater version published by the FSF" to be an
>> optional "or any license approved by <foo>" where <foo> could be Linus
>> Torvalds, X.org, or the Gentoo Foundation.
>
> Am I the only one who sees this as THE invitation to a chaotic licence-hell?
>

And here I was thinking that licenses were already hell
-- 
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[gentoo-amd64] Re: Sun and GPL

[Duncan]

Isidore Ducasse <ducasse.isidore@gmail.com> posted
20070528024149.4f6d918c@Bazaar, excerpted below, on  Mon, 28 May 2007
02:41:49 +0200:

> le Sun, 27 May 2007 23:32:49 +0000 (UTC) Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> a
> écrit:
> 
>> They ARE considering dual-licensing Solaris under GPLv3, however, which
>> they've been working closely with the FSF on.  Of course that's not a
>> given until it's out, but it'd definitely widen the interest base (I
>> for one may well be interested, especially if Linux stays GPLv2 only).
> 
> You mean the bare kernel, right? Solaris' kernel could be an alternative
> to linux? Is the latter really different from the *BSD's? I've installed
> a NetBSD on my machine "for fun" recently (tho I switched back to using
> my good'ol gentoo, can't get used to anything else now. pkgsrc looks
> like a sympathetic old auntie); it appears to practice monolithic
> kernel. What would be different in running a GPLv3 kernel? I've read
> about the anti-DRM part of it; is there some other reason you/we could
> be interested in it?

BSS Jr's response covered much of what I would have covered, but I've a 
bit to add in places.

What I think Sun may be angling for in their leaning towards releasing 
OpenSolaris under the GPLv3, particularly since earlier the Linux kernel 
devs were nearly unanimous in saying they weren't interested in moving to 
the GPLv3 (as I said, based on the early drafts), is ideally to "Out-
Linux Linux", so to speak.

First, you may or may not have heard of Nexenta, or the Gentoo on 
OpenSolaris port, etc.  You also may or may not be aware that Gentoo/FBSD 
is one of the other Gentoo Alt projects, from what I read coming along 
reasonably well, too. =8^)

Basically, what many of these do is a variant of GNU/Linux, only in this 
case, GNU/BSD or GNU/Solaris or GNU/whatever, with the GNU toolchain and 
GNU based userland running on whatever other *ix kernel, be it FBSD, 
Solaris, whatever.  Debian does it.  Gentoo does it.  That's not new.

In fact, to some extent it's older than GNU/Linux, or at least older than 
the popularization of GNU/Linux, back when Linux wasn't half the kernel 
it is today, and was way under-featured and under-speced compared to the 
Unixes of the time.  Back then, while GNU had a relatively mature 
userland, it lacked a good kernel.  At the same time, many of the Unixes 
(Solaris included, this was back around Solaris 2, thru Solaris 4 or so, 
tho Linux was coming on strong by then) had solid kernels but aging and 
hard to work with userlands.  It therefore wasn't uncommon for people to 
buy a Sun box, and essentially replace most of the Solaris userland tools 
with GNU tools.  If you read about the time, many people tell how the 
first thing they did after they got Solaris up and running was install 
the GNU tools, and pretty much never use the Solaris tools again.

So there's really some history to GNU/Solaris, and it's not as strange a 
thought to /either/ side as it might appear to some of us newbies to the 
scene.

Now that Sun seems to be "seeing the light" in terms of free and open 
source software (note that they have a lot of code in a typical Linux 
install already, Open/Star Office, Java, particularly on servers, they 
are huge GNOME sponsors), and have already opened much of their Solaris 
code under the CDDL as OpenSolaris, were they to go GPLv3, with the GNU 
code ALSO licensed GPLv3 (after the official license comes out, of 
course), /especially/ if the Linux kernel remains GPLv2 only, it's /
quite/ possible Stallman and the FSF might officially bless GNU/Solaris 
and deemphasize GNU/HURD AND Linux.  He/they might then see that as one 
of the ways to encourage the use of GPLv3, in the face-off with Linux 
staying GPLv2.  Obviously, that could put a whole new twist on the way we 
see the Free Software community.

That's the Solaris side.  Now examine the side staying with GPLv2, if 
Linux indeed does so.  What's the future look like?  Well, we have the 
likes of Tivo, already making it impossible to run the so-called "open" 
code on their hardware, due to code signing and not releasing the keys 
necessary to run any user modifications on that hardware.  Many people 
predict that's the way DRM may head, the way of Intel/MS Palladium, aka 
"Trusted Computing", as well.  As another example, we have the HDMI 
digital audio/video interface, designed to only run what is properly 
licensed to run, or at least only allow it access to "privileged" data 
such as media content.

Then we have the whole Novell/MS patent deal thing, where MS licenses its 
technology to certain preferred Novell users, but not others, and not 
those using other distributions.  Further, MS says they won't sue 
hobbyist developers as long as they only use the changes they make 
themselves, not distributing them.  Of course, that breaks the back of 
the whole idea of Free Software.  The GPLv2 doesn't have any direct 
protection against such things, but the GPLv3 has been engineered in such 
a way that if you use GPLv3 code covered by your patents, if you let 
anybody else use it, any customers, etc, well then, it applies to all, 
customer and non-customer alike.

So, the future looks like it could be pretty dark for freedom, if we 
continue to depend on GPLv2.  The license will practically be little 
different than the 3-clause BSD license, as people will be able to 
effectively close their code, with patent agreements exploiting the MS/
Novell loophole and hardware signed code verification Tivoizing things so 
even with source, modified code won't run, even if they can't directly 
close it.  That kills the dynamic that has made Linux and a lot of GPLv2 
code what it is.  Without that dynamic, it could easily be headed for the 
relatively quiet backwaters neighboring the BSDs, open source still, but 
not (practically) forcing folks to contribute their changes back, thus 
slowing down development.

Put those two together and you have what I think Sun is hoping for.  If 
the OpenSolaris kernel can become /the/ blessed GNU kernel, and Linux 
says GPLv2 and gets BSDed, OpenSolaris could eventually eclipse Linux.  
While it wouldn't be proprietary, and it's likely they'll have to open up 
development even further in ordered for it to take off and become really 
dominant, so other companies would contribute and could distribute it 
just as they distribute Linux today, Sun would still be in a /very/ good 
position.

I think that's the game they are playing, the ultimate goal they have in 
mind.  And yes, if they go GPLv3 with the Solaris kernel, and Linux stays 
GPLv2, IMO it's quite possible it'll happen that way.  

IMO, the Linux devs will ultimately realize this too, and have to choose 
between marginalization and going GPLv3.  In fact, from Linus' recent 
comments, he seems to already be giving himself room to do that.  Yes, 
many of the issues he raised have been addressed, definitely making it 
easier to come around, but he may be seeing this same game being played 
out in his head too, and not particularly like its result.

> BTW isn't there a technical issue licensing a single version of a soft
> against two incompatible licenses? Or did you mean dual-licensing GPLv2
> and GPLv3?

It depends on who holds the copyrights.  The copyright holder can license 
however they please, and in fact distribute under a license that makes no 
sense, if they wish to.  It's the other people that have to live with the 
legal uncertainty, and that uncertainty exists ONLY because if the 
license isn't consistent, the copyright holder can yank permissions to 
distribute or even continue to run the software at all (because at least 
in the US, the act of loading into memory from disk or other permanent 
storage has been held to be an act of copying, thus subject to copyright 
restrictions and permissions).

However, this wouldn't ultimately be inconsistent.  The idea is similar 
to the business model used by Trolltech for Qt and by the MySQL guys for 
it.  In both cases, they dual (or more, triple...) license their software 
GPL, and proprietary.  The developer/user/distributor gets to choose 
which of the two licenses they agree to.  If they are going to free the 
code of anything they build on it, great, the GPL license works just 
fine.  However, if they want to build proprietary tools on the dual-
licensed software, they can't use the GPL, and must pay the company in 
question for a proprietary-commercial license, which generally costs a 
significant amount of money.

This has in fact been a QUITE successful business model for Trolltech.  
The open source guys develop stuff like KDE on Qt, which works as a 
pretty convincing demonstration of the capacities of the toolkit, as well 
as providing feedback and new features and bugfixes from the community.  
Other companies see how effective Qt is, and how it could shorten and 
improve their development process, and not willing to release their own 
code, they must pay to buy a commercial license from Trolltech.  Yet they 
are happy to do so, because the return is far more than what they pay.  
This in turn funds Trolltech to pay developers to continue to advance the 
product, benefiting both their paying customers and the Free Software 
side.

This model has in fact been SO successful for Trolltech that with Qt4, 
they opened up the GPL licensing to apply to Qt on MSWindows as well -- 
it formerly applied only to the *ix platform.  They'd not dare open up 
the possibility of a free version on MS if the model wasn't already 
demonstratedly working very well for them.  In doing so, they've also 
opened up the possibility of KDE on MS, and in fact, much of KDE 4 is 
indeed going to run on and be available for MS Windows as well as Linux 
and the other *ix platforms.  (Not the entire thing.  Most general KDE4 
apps will run in MS, they say, but KDE as a unified environment is going 
to remain *ix only, for both practical/technical and political reasons.  
For example MSWindows already has a windowing system, so KDE's isn't 
necessary.  Thus, the full experience will remain a 'nix thing.  That 
said, Konqueror for example, could give Firefox some serious competition, 
with its KHTML engine already being the basis of Apple Safari, so it'll 
now run on all three platforms just as Firefox does, and people could 
start with Konqueror and other KDE apps on MS, and continue using the 
same things when they switch to Linux -- or OpenSolaris. =8^)

So anyway, as long as Sun holds its own copyrights, and/or has gotten 
appropriate permission from the other owners where Sun doesn't hold them, 
they can license however they please.

>> Of course Linus and the other kernel devs were originally very much
>> against early GPLv3 drafts.
> 
> Is it a matter of diverging positions towards industrial partners/users?

I think Boyd covered that pretty well.

>> The Gentoo Java devs are working on it, but as I said, I don't believe
>> enough of the entire Java infrastructure has been released as GPL yet
>> to do the entire thing as sources.  Even after it has, it'll take
>> several months as experimental ebuilds in the Java overlay (emerge
>> layman and read up on using it, if interested)
> 
> Ok! Does anyone know the difference between the java-overlay and the
> java-gcj-overlay?

GCJ is GCC's Java compiler.  Generally, it'd be for compiling Java 
sources to arch-native code, not to the traditional VM targeted Java 
bytecode.  Thus, while it might be useful for someone wishing to compile 
their Java app just as they would a C/C++/whatever app, to native binary 
code to directly execute on their CPU, it's not particularly interesting 
for someone primarily interested in Java as a browser VM.

Since you specifically mentioned Java as a browser VM, I therefore assume 
you will be more interested in the standard java-overlay.

One word of caution, just in case you hadn't figured this out from what I 
and others have already said.  The Gentoo devs (and contributing users, 
overlays give the flexibility to allow non-Gentoo-dev users more direct 
access, if the devs in charge of the overlay trust them of course, 
without the user having to go thru the entire Gentoo dev process) use the 
java-overlay as a staging ground for working stuff up to standard Gentoo 
tree quality.  Some major changes go on there.  It was used to work out 
the switch to the new java-config arrangement before it hit the tree, for 
instance.  However, as the staging ground, it won't always work like the 
unmasked stuff in the tree should work.  At times, parts of it will be 
broken, and you'll have to do some things manually in ordered to get 
stuff to work, or unmerge it and go back to the stuff in the tree, if 
it's too broken.  It's there for users to use if they feel up to it, 
hopefully to test and pitch in and help if they find stuff broken.  
However, don't expect it to all just work all the time, because it's a 
development overlay, and development is what happens there, including 
breakage at times.  If you are prepared to deal with that, well, go for 
it! =8^)

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Sun and GPL

[Conway S. Smith]

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On Mon, 28 May 2007 11:14:46 +0000 (UTC)
Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:
<Much snippage>
> 
> First, you may or may not have heard of Nexenta, or the Gentoo on 
> OpenSolaris port, etc.  You also may or may not be aware that
> Gentoo/FBSD is one of the other Gentoo Alt projects, from what I read
> coming along reasonably well, too. =8^)
>  
<Even more snippage>

Last I heard, Gentoo/FBSD was stalled, due to licensing terms.  But it
was some time ago, has that changed?


Conway S. Smith

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[gentoo-amd64] Re: Sun and GPL

[Duncan]

"Conway S. Smith" <beolach@comcast.net> posted
20070528071415.415b75f1@mandalor.homelinux.net, excerpted below, on  Mon,
28 May 2007 07:14:15 -0600:

> Last I heard, Gentoo/FBSD was stalled, due to licensing terms.  But it
> was some time ago, has that changed?

I don't believe it's stalled now.  Among other things, Roy is designing
Baselayout-2 to be friendlier to Gentoo/FBSD.  Baselayout-2 is a pretty 
recent development, and definitely still masked as it's still in serious 
development.  (FWIW, I've been running 1.13.0_alphaXX for some time, 
since it was hard masked tho it seems to be ~arch now, but I've not tried 
2.0 yet, at all.)

The worst recent blow, AFAIK, was when Flameeyes quit, as that was his 
baby (well, one of them, he was incredibly productive all over the 
place).  Fortunately, he's back, but taking it a bit slower this time, 
mainly focusing on GFBSD.

BTW, his blog at http://farragut.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org/ has some very
interesting entries re the thread topic, and this subthread, and gcc
as well.

First, his latest entry explains a bit about coming back (the links
include date and title):
http://farragut.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org/articles/2007/05/27/shedding-a-light-on-my-return

Second, back on the second page, he discusses his work on OpenJDK.
He's mainly interested in getting it to work for GFBSD since the
FBSD version is old and vulnerable, but he's getting it working
on Gentoo Linux first.  Apparently, it DOES compile on amd64, but
may require a bit of tweaking due to path lengths.  Anyway, worth
reading for anyone following the GPLv2ing of Java, particularly
as it applies to Gentoo and specifically, Gentoo/amd64.

Three entries:
http://farragut.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org/articles/2007/05/09/openjdk-and-gentoo-freebsd
http://farragut.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org/articles/2007/05/10/my-fiddling-with-openjdk
http://farragut.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org/articles/2007/05/15/openjdk-the-vulnerabilities-and-you

Finally, as one who has unmasked gcc-4.2.0 locally, and recompiled
my entire system (that'll work with it, I've about a half-dozen
packages that won't), this entry on gcc 4.3 and the problems
it's going to cause is interesting:
http://farragut.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org/articles/2007/05/11/gcc-4-3-it-will-be-a-bloodshed

Hmm... the g2planet RSS feed doesn't seem to be carrying flameeyes
blog again yet.  Having just read a bunch of it, and found
all that interesting stuff, I'm going to have to rss-feed it directly...

-- 
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Baselayout 2 (Was: Sun and GPL)

[Sebastian Redl]

Duncan wrote:
> I don't believe it's stalled now.  Among other things, Roy is designing
> Baselayout-2 to be friendlier to Gentoo/FBSD.  Baselayout-2 is a pretty 
> recent development, and definitely still masked as it's still in serious 
> development.  (FWIW, I've been running 1.13.0_alphaXX for some time, 
> since it was hard masked tho it seems to be ~arch now, but I've not tried 
> 2.0 yet, at all.)
>   
I've got baselayout 2 on my experimental partition (seemed to need it
for getting lvm2 to work with root on a logical volume) and it's working
just fine. Haven't done much yet on that partition, though, not even
installed X.

Sebastian
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[gentoo-amd64] Re: Baselayout 2 (Was: Sun and GPL)

[Duncan]

Sebastian Redl <sebastian.redl@getdesigned.at> posted
465B2189.9010008@getdesigned.at, excerpted below, on  Mon, 28 May 2007
20:38:01 +0200:

> I've got baselayout 2 on my experimental partition (seemed to need it
> for getting lvm2 to work with root on a logical volume) and it's working
> just fine. Haven't done much yet on that partition, though, not even
> installed X.

Could be.  When I setup my RAID here, I specifically arranged for root 
and a backup root snapshot to be directly on RAID partitions, because the 
kernel can handle them directly with only a bit of stuff on the command 
line (so in grub), no root on LVM as that would require an initramfs, and 
I preferred to keep things simple, because simple isn't so likely to 
break and is easier to fix if it does.

-- 
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and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Baselayout 2 (Was: Sun and GPL)

[Wil Reichert]

> Sebastian Redl <sebastian.redl@getdesigned.at> posted
> 465B2189.9010008@getdesigned.at, excerpted below, on  Mon, 28 May 2007
> 20:38:01 +0200:
>
> > I've got baselayout 2 on my experimental partition (seemed to need it
> > for getting lvm2 to work with root on a logical volume) and it's working
> > just fine. Haven't done much yet on that partition, though, not even
> > installed X.
>
> Could be.  When I setup my RAID here, I specifically arranged for root
> and a backup root snapshot to be directly on RAID partitions, because the
> kernel can handle them directly with only a bit of stuff on the command
> line (so in grub), no root on LVM as that would require an initramfs, and
> I preferred to keep things simple, because simple isn't so likely to
> break and is easier to fix if it does.

I've done lvm on a root partition before with the old baselayout.
Just followed the directions here:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Install_Gentoo_on_an_LVM2_root_partition
It did need an initramfs, but genkernel makes that step pretty easy.
Haven't really played with 2 yet, but from what I see it looks pretty
spiffy.

Wil
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Baselayout 2 (Was: Sun and GPL)

[Florian D.]

Wil Reichert wrote:
> I've done lvm on a root partition before with the old baselayout. Just followed the directions 
> here: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Install_Gentoo_on_an_LVM2_root_partition It did need an 
> initramfs, but genkernel makes that step pretty easy.
FYI, genkernel is creating an initrd, not an initramfs, which is the preferred way nowadays.
Information on how to setup an initramfs can be found at:
http://lldn.timesys.com/docs/initramfs

more info about initramfs and the difference to an initrd is in
Documentation/filesystems/ramfs-rootfs-initramfs.txt
of your linux kernel tree.
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Baselayout 2 (Was: Sun and GPL)

[Joshua Hoblitt]

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On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 02:33:18AM +0200, Florian D. wrote:
> FYI, genkernel is creating an initrd, not an initramfs, which is the preferred way nowadays.
> Information on how to setup an initramfs can be found at:
> http://lldn.timesys.com/docs/initramfs

Umm, I think you need to check your facts.  genkernel creates a gzip'd
CPIO archive named "initramfs-genkernel-arch-versionstring"...

-J

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Baselayout 2 (Was: Sun and GPL)

[Wil Reichert]

On 5/29/07, Joshua Hoblitt <jhoblitt@ifa.hawaii.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 02:33:18AM +0200, Florian D. wrote:
> > FYI, genkernel is creating an initrd, not an initramfs, which is the
> preferred way nowadays.
> > Information on how to setup an initramfs can be found at:
> > http://lldn.timesys.com/docs/initramfs
>
> Umm, I think you need to check your facts.  genkernel creates a gzip'd
> CPIO archive named "initramfs-genkernel-arch-versionstring"...

So the command 'genkernel initrd' creates a file called
'initramfs-...'  which contains files called etc/initrd.defaults and
etc/initrd.scripts.  Poor naming conventions but it looks like an
initrd to me.

Wil
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[gentoo-amd64] Re: Baselayout 2 (Was: Sun and GPL)

[Duncan]

"Wil Reichert" <wil.reichert@gmail.com> posted
7a329d910705292138k76ece020gdf1d226405cb1fff@mail.gmail.com, excerpted
below, on  Tue, 29 May 2007 21:38:17 -0700:

> On 5/29/07, Joshua Hoblitt <jhoblitt@ifa.hawaii.edu> wrote:
>> On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 02:33:18AM +0200, Florian D. wrote:
>> > FYI, genkernel is creating an initrd, not an initramfs, which is the
>> preferred way nowadays.
>> > Information on how to setup an initramfs can be found at:
>> > http://lldn.timesys.com/docs/initramfs
>>
>> Umm, I think you need to check your facts.  genkernel creates a gzip'd
>> CPIO archive named "initramfs-genkernel-arch-versionstring"...
> 
> So the command 'genkernel initrd' creates a file called 'initramfs-...' 
> which contains files called etc/initrd.defaults and etc/initrd.scripts. 
> Poor naming conventions but it looks like an initrd to me.

It's possible I'm mistaken on this since I've not used an initrd/
initramfs either one since the kernel switched with 2.6 (vs. 2.4 and 
before), but from my reading, 2.6 kernels make an initramfs, not an 
initrd.  However, many still call it an initrd, simply because that's 
what it was, for years.

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Baselayout 2 (Was: Sun and GPL)

[Isidore Ducasse]

le Tue, 29 May 2007 21:38:17 -0700
"Wil Reichert" <wil.reichert@gmail.com> a écrit:

> On 5/29/07, Joshua Hoblitt <jhoblitt@ifa.hawaii.edu> wrote:
> > On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 02:33:18AM +0200, Florian D. wrote:
> > > FYI, genkernel is creating an initrd, not an initramfs, which is the
> > preferred way nowadays.
> > > Information on how to setup an initramfs can be found at:
> > > http://lldn.timesys.com/docs/initramfs
> >
> > Umm, I think you need to check your facts.  genkernel creates a gzip'd
> > CPIO archive named "initramfs-genkernel-arch-versionstring"...
> 
> So the command 'genkernel initrd' creates a file called
> 'initramfs-...'  which contains files called etc/initrd.defaults and
> etc/initrd.scripts.  Poor naming conventions but it looks like an
> initrd to me.
> 

I'm "afraid" it isn't. Try zcat initramfs | cpio -t . initramfs are cpio archives. And genkenrel is such a wild beast, that it compiles a static busybox against uclibc _if_ you have an uclibc toolchain available for your arch through crossdev (this feature really impresses me). If I'm not wrong, when you haven't got any such toolchain, it uses a prebuilt version of busybox. Those informations were gathered empirically by using genkernel. Could someone confirm/infirm/precise?
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Baselayout 2 (Was: Sun and GPL)

[Joshua Hoblitt]

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The terminilogy of initramfs/initrd is used pretty lossely, even by
kernel devs.  My understanding is that typically 'initrd' is refering to
an actual filesystem image (created on a loopback) and get's mounted a a
ramdisk and used at the root filesystem.  Where as an initramfs image is
just a CPIO archive that gets unpacked into a tmpfs filesystem that is
then mounted as root.  initramfs images can be either built into the
kernel image or loaded from an external file.  Byeond the format there's
not much difference bewteen them.  In theory an initramfs iamge could be a
bit smaller as it doesn't have to drag around the filesystem metadata
with it.  Also, as it's just a CPIO archive a driver for the
filesystem type need not be built into the kernel.

Wikipedia considers initramfs & initrd to refer to the same thing:

	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initrd

Cheers,

-J

--
On Tue, May 29, 2007 at 09:38:17PM -0700, Wil Reichert wrote:
> On 5/29/07, Joshua Hoblitt <jhoblitt@ifa.hawaii.edu> wrote:
> >On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 02:33:18AM +0200, Florian D. wrote:
> >> FYI, genkernel is creating an initrd, not an initramfs, which is the
> >preferred way nowadays.
> >> Information on how to setup an initramfs can be found at:
> >> http://lldn.timesys.com/docs/initramfs
> >
> >Umm, I think you need to check your facts.  genkernel creates a gzip'd
> >CPIO archive named "initramfs-genkernel-arch-versionstring"...
> 
> So the command 'genkernel initrd' creates a file called
> 'initramfs-...'  which contains files called etc/initrd.defaults and
> etc/initrd.scripts.  Poor naming conventions but it looks like an
> initrd to me.
> 
> Wil
> -- 
> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
> 

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Baselayout 2 (Was: Sun and GPL)

[Florian D.]

Joshua Hoblitt wrote:
> On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 02:33:18AM +0200, Florian D. wrote:
>> FYI, genkernel is creating an initrd, not an initramfs, which is the preferred way nowadays.
>> Information on how to setup an initramfs can be found at:
>> http://lldn.timesys.com/docs/initramfs
> 
> Umm, I think you need to check your facts.  genkernel creates a gzip'd
> CPIO archive named "initramfs-genkernel-arch-versionstring"...
> 
true. I was confused, because genkernel does not link it directly into
the kernel, which would be the case, if you'd set it up manually.
thanks for putting me right.
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