[X2go-dev] source code repository

Heinz-M. Graesing x2go-dev at x2go.org
Fri Jul 16 12:52:57 CEST 2010


Am 16.07.2010 06:21, schrieb Gerry Reno:
>
>
> And you cannot make an "open core" project out of a derivative of a 
> GPL work.  The "open core" part has to be in surrounding apps that 
> themselves do not link to any GPL code whatsoever.
>
>

Hello Gerry,
hello list members,

Please have a look back in time. A few months before there was not much 
traffic on this list and we've known every member of our community by 
name and face. Our community mainly is and was Linux4Afrika and later 
the german branch skolelinux  too.
Both projects are known to be aware about what open source is and both 
projects have choosen to use x2go. This is because they where able to 
modify it to their needs and to adopt own ideas. Upstream in this case 
means, that those modifications have been released in their projects, 
because the changes have been very specific to their solutions.
Now this situation changes and x2go is getting more popular. But there 
are still a huge number of users (schools, institutions and companies) 
who rely on x2go and it's compatibility. x2go has its own "history". 
Every part of the new relase contains wishes from those and the people 
on the list.
x2go has been and will ever be open source software. Furthermore it is 
based on existing open source software. This is - in our eyes - the only 
way x2go should be developed. Even more there is a vision / a target 
which we want to reach some day, which will help a lot of other projects 
-> getting the needed nx features realized using a modern xorg version. 
The sources have ever been online and will stay there and they are used 
by others like the maintainers of other distros (they could not build 
their packages if not - f.e. Gentoo). Please don't mix the governance of 
a project with the accuse of GPL violation.
We can't answer every email on the list, but we are reading it. And if 
you follow the development of x2go, you'll see that there is a big 
accordance between the wishes / bugreports and the features of a new 
release.
I would suggest we should discuss the idea of drawing a line between 
"mainstream", "contributions" and maybe "spins". We will definitly go on 
developing x2go (mainstream) as a to itself compatible and complete 
project. We will accept contributions in this branch, but they should be

* in the mind of "the whole" idea of x2go (a server based computing 
environment)
* not be destroying work already done
* maintainable by more than the submitting person
* usable for more than one specific use case only
* helping to make it possible to use recent xorg versions with the 
nxlibs features
* helping to get x2go inside debian

And (again):

PLEASE use the list as communication tool! I received a lot of emails 
about this topic in my private inbox. Keep your answers polite and help 
this discussion to be productive.

It would be nice to ask some questions first, before publishing your own 
truth. For example:

Why do you publish your code as tar.gz archive inside your repository?

Sure there are tools on this earth that make some things easier. But not 
using this tools don't means "forbidding" something like contributions. 
John has already used the list for this purpose and as far as I know it 
is already used by other users. We will use our online git as planned 
and we'll always thankfully awaiting patches and contributions.

To get back on the "communication issue": As far as I know "we" (or 
anybody else) never had communicate a final result about "how open x2go 
is". So this discussion needs to be done before accusing this project to 
be "what ever the result will be".

If you like to help other projects than x2go, please help them by 
contributing and not by boycott this on. Nobody is forced to use x2go 
and everybody can do whatever he want's to do as he can access the code.

Regards,

Alex & Heinz







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