root@MCIRPS2.MED.NYU.EDU (07/20/90)
I am confused about distribution/right to use of X11 software. I understand that sgi offers an x11 developers package, which costs money, which is partly to pay royalites to the X people(mit ?). We have a summer student here who is putting up X11R4 from mit which is available via anonmymous ftp over the net from mit. While we have not yet gotten the source code to compile, the binaries from the net work fine... (I don't know if we got the binary object code archives, or if already compiled and ready to link archives are available). My question is: Who owns X for sgi machines ? If it is available over the net, why does sgi need to sell it ? What are the contractual and legal issues that a developer such as ourselves should know about the X from sgi or mit ? Why does sgi sell X for so much(how much ?) when mit has it for free ? Which package offering is better, or more directly, which should I use as a sgi software developer ? dan. -- +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | karron@nyu.edu Dan Karron | | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New York University Medical Center | | 560 First Avenue \ \ Pager <1> (212) 397 9330 | | New York, New York 10016 \**\ <2> 10896 <3> <your-number-here> | | (212) 340 5210 \**\__________________________________________ | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
jsw@xhead.esd.sgi.com (Jeff Weinstein) (07/20/90)
In article <9007190859.AA25709@mcirps2.med.nyu.edu>, root@MCIRPS2.MED.NYU.EDU writes: > I understand that sgi offers an x11 developers package, which costs money, > which is partly to pay royalites to the X people(mit ?). The money we charge pays for our software development efforts, support, distribution, etc. No one pays MIT royalties for X11R4. > Who owns X for sgi machines ? If it is available over the net, why does > sgi need to sell it ? What are the contractual and legal issues that > a developer such as ourselves should know about the X from sgi or mit ? > Why does sgi sell X for so much(how much ?) when mit has it for free ? You can get an unsupported X that you have to port, compile, fix, support yourself over the net from MIT. You can get an already built, ported, supported, (mostly) fixed version from SGI. Note that as we move from NeWS to X the price of the X dev package will be coming down. > Which package offering is better, or more directly, which should I use > as a sgi software developer ? If you ever want to get fixes/support/working code from sgi then buy ours. If you want to muck with the source yourself and are willing to support it then get it from MIT. --Jeff Jeff Weinstein - X Protocol Police Silicon Graphics, Inc., Entry Systems Division, Window Systems jsw@xhead.esd.sgi.com Any opinions expressed above are mine, not sgi's.
jim@baroque.Stanford.EDU (James Helman) (07/21/90)
> I don't know if we got the binary object code archives, or if already > compiled and ready to link archives are available. Along with a patch to X11R4 for IRIX, I also put out X11R4 binaries, libraries and include files for anonymous ftp from fresnel.stanford.edu. I'm not supporting or planning to update these files, which date from IRIX 3.2 (tho' I'm still using them under 3.3). > What are the contractual and legal issues that a developer such as > ourselves should know about the X from sgi or mit ? Can someone from SGI comment on any licensing terms for distributing binaries which have been statically linked against SGI libraries (libc, libgl, libX*)? How about binaries linked against shared libraries? Jim Helman Department of Applied Physics 6 Trillium Lane Stanford University San Carlos, CA 94070 (jim@thrush.stanford.edu) (415) 723-9127
karron@MCIRPS2.MED.NYU.EDU (07/22/90)
I know that it is easy to get the source. I have a summer student getting it to run on our iris. My question is about the legal issues if I include code that relies on or uses code from the X11 stuff. dan. -- +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | karron@nyu.edu Dan Karron | | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New York University Medical Center | | 560 First Avenue \ \ Pager <1> (212) 397 9330 | | New York, New York 10016 \**\ <2> 10896 <3> <your-number-here> | | (212) 340 5210 \**\__________________________________________ | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+