People will pay for convenience and polish. Also, i would guess that Windows users are not likely to be free software purists and just wants something that works with a minimum of fuss.
The price of software should be based on the value it provides to the user, not on what it cost to make it.
RedHat's the first billion dollar Linux company, but first and foremost it's a business. Their sales people are aggressive and their lawyer's hungry. Support contracts don't exactly fly off the shelves, especially when there's a huge community of experts.
How many people do you know that have given money to Canonical for Ubuntu?
Also, RedHat stopped providing detail changelogs and started doing just one bug diff dump after Oracle started hurting their business -- where Oracle's work at the time was basically repackaging RedHat's work and doing "sed s/RedHat Enterprise Linux/Oracle Unbreakable Linux". RedHat did what it felt needed to fend that off.
Up until that time, they were publishing their internal repositories.
There isn't anything wrong with that at all. If someone is undermining RedHat's business model it is reasonable for RedHat not to support them.
The spirit of the GPL is the source code should be available and the user can do what they like with it. RedHat makes the source code available and the user can do whatever they like with it. No principle says RedHat has to like what people do with their GPL-ed code. Quite the reverse is expected, in fact.
The spirit of the GPL is to make source code available. Why? So that anyone can maintain the software. Thus there's an expectation (however naive) that the code is in a usable format because that's kind of the point of having the source. RedHat, however, provides the source in an obtuse format, a format that isn't even how it's used it internally. That is to say, they go above and beyond, in order to make their source harder to use. I'd say that pretty directly violates the spirit, if not the letter of the GPL.
The other part is that the GPL explicitly grants customers the right to redistribute the changes. That's pretty wild. Buying a DVD copy of Avengers doesn't give me the right to setup Avengersflix.com and sell subscriptions. GPL software does. RedHat then turns around and says if you actually do that, then fuck you (paraphrased a bit). They are entirely within their rights to do that, but if you're telling me the spirit of the GPL gives me a right that I'm not actually supposed to exercise, then we'll just have to disagree. (Un)forunately for me, the legal system looks at the letter of the GPL rather than the spirit, so what Redhat's doing is legal.
Why does the GPL explicitly grant that permission if it isn't meant to be exercised? Why did RedHat choose the GPL?
They didn't, is the answer. It chose them. The two fundamental pieces, GNU libc and the Linux kernel, are LGPL and GPLv2 licensed, respectively, along with many other packages, and relicensing them is not something RedHat has the rights to do.
Hence, RedHat's strong-arm tactics to force people into buying expensive support contracts.
There's nothing legally wrong with what they're doing but it's still a dick move by RedHat. Sure, RedHat's dick move is in response to Oracle's dick move, but two wrongs don't make a right. They do make a billion dollar business though.
There are other more opinionated licenses that RedHat could adopt for new software that they do own the copyright to. For the conscientious objector software developer, there's the idea of the Non-Military Open Source License which says the military is not allowed to use the software. There's the AGPL, which is a further left license that says if you use my website, I owe you the source, and all modifications to it. Hell, RedHat can afford the lawyers to write their own license that says companies started by Larry Ellison aren't allowed access to the source.
The ones looking for an X server may be more likely to be
But I agree with you, that consumers pay for convenience and companies require Service Level Agreements for which they are willing to pay.
I don't see how a desktop X server is going to tap into that need.
I mean... I've been using and relatively happy with the Cygwin X server integration for more than a decade. I'm not about to drop $50 on a polished replacement.
I really hope that's the case with this software. There have been many in the past that provided "free source", but the binary from the app store is paid-for.
I would say "companies" will pay for ....
not sure about "people" undesrtood as individual persons
Otherwise you get a lot of perverse incentives.
I have little doubt that it's a polished fork, but what ultimately matters is the value added - in this case, the value is, "it just works". The only thing I had to do manually was to configure DISPLAY=:0 system-wide in my WSL.
The beauty of X410 is that you click "Install" in the store (which also means it auto-updates), run it, and that's it - it's configured out of the box to work in desktop integration mode. Top-level windows are projected onto the host desktop, clipboard is shared etc. It also has some convenience stuff, like DPI scaling.
I don't think I'd have paid $50 for that myself, to be honest (although I don't think they are actually selling it at $50... this looks more like one of those "permanently on sale" psychological tricks). But when they just got started and were selling it for cheap? I think it was a bargain then. OTOH for somebody who has never even seen an X server before, I can see how it can be a bargain even now.
I'm about 100% sure this thing just wraps the Cygwin X server, seeing its rootless support has exactly the same glitches.
Would it be the equivalent of /etc/profile?
\\wsl$
I've also been pretty happy with it, and substantive new features are added regularly. There's a couple little annoyances from the design assumption that the user's main interest is WSL, but for the most part, it's been much smoother than the other X11-for-Win32 variants.
Support was recently added for listening on a hyperv vsock, but again, it assumes that you're using Windows on the hardware and connecting to a virtualized Linux. The vsock-win32 driver for KVM is supposedly coming soon and then it will be fun to explore just reversing the tunnel and see what we can get done that way.
I've paid for xming a couple times in the last few years. Doesn't quite cut it with certain applications; various show stopper glitches. Really would like to solve the X Windows on Windows problem once and for all.
There are other posts speculating on the code base; isn't this just X.Org for Windows repackaged? Yes, it is based on X.Org. The publisher explains it on the site; it's X.Org with pre-Window 10 support removed and otherwise optimized and enhanced.
https://www.asa.org.uk/advice-online/promotional-savings-cla...
I'm not sure how much of it legally enforceable vs adhering to some code of conduct.
It's particularly not ok to bring someone else's personal details as ammunition in an argument (or attempt to): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... But please omit the name-calling ('leecher') and snark ('sorry to break it to you') also.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
I think a little bit of context is warranted. The parent is a shallow dismissal that applies to a vast amount of paid software (to be clear I have no skin in the game at all); “Wow how revolutionary! /s” didn’t help either. It’s a rather obvious case of guidelines violation itself according to my understanding, and it’s painful to see it voted to the top, which IMO doesn’t reflect well on the community at all.
(I know piling on a bad comment is no defense for breaking rules, but seeing it at the top was a bit much.)
As for the personal attack, the shallow dismissal is pretty bad as is, but I wouldn’t have vented my frustration if it came from someone who has notable contributions behind their belt and could somewhat understandably attack paid software like this. Not even meeting that threshold was a tipping point for me. Personally I gauge whether I have crossed the line with the thought experiment of whether I could say it out loud to that person’s face. In this case I could and I wouldn’t be ashamed of it. It breaks the rules here, that’s very clear, but I’m not ashamed of the comment.
Some specifics:
> name-calling (‘leecher’)
I was making a BitTorrent analogy where a seeder is someone who uploads and a leecher is someone who downloads. It was not meant to be offensive, but I can see how it could be read that way. Will be more careful in the future.
> snark
Point taken.
Overall, I don’t regret posting this comment, even if I’m banned for it right now. I will do my best to shut up in the future though, if I’m not.
I maintain that the parent comment is toxic and disappointing for the community.
I agree that the GP comment was a shallow dismissal, and those often lead to generic subthreads, which tend to attract upvotes and replies and generally change the subject to a more generic topic, which is bad. Most of the damage is in the upvotes, actually, because the biggest problem comes from such a comment sitting at the top of a thread, accruing mass and choking out more specific and substantive discussion. That's a big problem on HN.
When we see generic subthreads or shallow dismissals or (worse) flamewar tangents at the top of an HN discussion, we downweight them. That has turned out to be a great solution, especially when the subthread isn't really violating the site guidelines. Its big weakness is that it requires us to know about it, and we don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. If you or anyone sees one of these discussion-choking subthreads sitting as the top comment, emailing [email protected] a heads-up would be a valuable contribution. Those are some of the best heads-ups we get, especially when a thread is still live.
I believe what they are doing is probably fine. However, without properly stating their value-add, it may be misleading to users that do not understand there are also open source options with very similar functionality. I think I get the idea, but nonetheless.
Legality and whatnot aside, I do believe there is a spirit of open source. Like, if everyone in the world behaved the “worst” they could while fulfilling all legal obligations, nothing would be functional at all anywhere. Similarly open source depends on certain behaviors, like sharing, community, etc. I believe everyone that uses open source, especially those who benefit off of it, should behave in a way that if everyone behaved like them, things would continue to function. In that vein, I hope they do contribute upstream where it makes sense to, at the very minimum, like applicable bug fixes. There’s probably no legal obligation to do so (X11 is MIT license, right?), and of course it would help their “competition” to do so. But I do believe it is certainly in the spirit.
Yeah, tell me about it, did I fail to mention I actually write widely used open source software, as opposed to the original complainer whose profile indicates little open source activity?
> In that vein, I hope they do contribute upstream where it makes sense to, at the very minimum, like applicable bug fixes.
And where’s the evidence that they aren’t already doing so? Where’s even the evidence that X410 is repackaging? I don’t know either way, but gp just started trashing the software because they sell licenses for 50 bucks a pop, which is not evidence for anything.
The only things defining open source and free software are the copyright hacks that are licenses such as GPL, MIT, BSD, etc. If someone wants their code to not be used a certain way, they can adapt their license it to avoid it.
Again... legal obligations and morality are two different things. Morality is subjective. You can’t encode morality or subjectivity to that degree into a license. You can’t legally enforce the spirit of a community or movement.
Obviously GPL strikes some kind of balance by trying to encode a legal provision that forces collaboration, and that’s cool. But GPL is a trade-off. It creates legal problems that don't hugely benefit anyone. ZFS on Linux is a perfect example of where GPL hinders a perfectly in-spirit action that would mostly be to everyone’s benefit.
Whether you prefer erring on the side of caution or on the side of flexibility is more of a personal thing. I tend to use a BSD license, and I don’t personally care what happens to my code. Still, that doesn’t mean that I think there aren’t ways to abuse that where someone benefits and open source loses.
Sorry, I can see where the frustration comes from here, but from an outsider's view the CDDL is just as much to blame. It takes two for there to be a license incompatibility. If there is some piece of information missing here then let us know, although in my experience the lawyers don't like to make this sort of thing public.
>I tend to use a BSD license, and I don’t personally care what happens to my code. Still, that doesn’t mean that I think there aren’t ways to abuse that where someone benefits and open source loses.
I also use non-copyleft licenses a lot, but accepting that other parties are going to profit and not give anything back has always been a part of that. It's not a total loss -- it gives you an in to lobby them hard for donations, support payments, consulting fees, or some other kind of contribution.
open source was coined exactly to stride away from any spirit and ethical standings, focusing only on the code and its practical advantages when available to be shared. This way, enterprise can be more likely to accept it. (also because English-based enterprise is deemed too dumb to understand free can mean two different things)
Free Software is the thing that sees practical and ethical advantages as an indivisible unit. And it's fine to sell Free Software as long as you guarantee the buyer's right to acquire the source, in the case of the GPL for example.
One of the key points of the creation of the term "open source" was the distancing from the ethical aspects of Free Software - to turn its face on it and "hope for the best". Yet, of course the ramifications of ethical creation, usage and sharing are usually still there on "open source" projects, since it's how things often tend to go when creating Free Software - _despite_ the new term, not _because_ of it.
> I will continue to use the term “open source” to refer to the whole shebang, which has been best for communicating to most people who aren’t fighting over terminology semantics as a means to push ideology.
By charging "open source" with the ethical+practical unity of Free Software, you are doing exactly what the very creators and advocates of the term wanted to avoid - "ideology". Therefore this point sounds so... weird?
JSON's don't be evil comes to mind.
I personally don't feel like we should coddle their legal teams, but it is a good idea to be careful with any license modifications.
Originally thinking it was another open source project, I looked at the website to see if there were some features that would be worth it to switch from VcXsrv. Mostly it talked about how there was a windowed mode that allowed seamless integration with Windows. Wow how revolutionary! /s