2004.06_Projects-Free Software and Its Makers.pdf

COMMUNITY

Free Software Projects

Projects on the Move

Again, we picked the best of the

can also produce screen-shots on

the fly – a feature that other players

tend to make quite a meal of. The

player can also play individual

MPEG2 files without any fuss.

The Ogle developers make no

attempt to conceal Ogle’s weak

spots. For example, users wanting to

view another DVD need to re-launch

the program after playing a DVD.

Most users will be unconcerned by

the fact that Ogle does not provide a

backward viewing feature.

Normal desktop users may not be

too happy with the fact that Ogle

does not have a GUI. If you want a

GUI, you have to add it yourself.

The easiest way to do this, is to down-

load the Ogle developers’ GTK interface.

If you prefer QT and KDE, check out

Okle [4] instead.

Ogle leaves a good impression on most

users. The tool works well, and it plays

DVDs reliably. The only thing to spoil

your viewing pleasure is the unsatisfac-

tory copyright situation with regard to

decoding encrypted DVDs.

bunch for you: a DVD player from

Sweden, trouble down at the

Xfree86 project, and the latest

news on the imminent election of

the Debian Project Leader.

BY MARTIN LOSCHWITZ

time it is. Occasionally, it causes

problems that drive us to the brink

of insanity. If you need to let off steam,

Ping Win [1] is a good start. In this flash

splatter game, the object is to club cute

penguins as far into the icy landscape as

you can. Let’s return to a less macabre

project, the Ogle video player.

Unfortunately, there is one problem

that not even Ogle can do anything

about: the disaster with libdvdcss for

DVD decryption. To legally allow a

player to decode encrypted DVDs, you

need to license the player. Intervideo has

been working on LinDVD – a licensed

DVD player for some time now. The only

way to view DVDs on Linux at present, is

the illegal one that requires libdvdcss.

Video on Linux with Ogle

The flood of video formats for the Inter-

net has led to a whole crop of players.

Many of them are all round talents that

can handle nearly any format. Most of

them can also play DVD videos on your

computer screen. If you are looking for a

specialized DVD player, the selection is

not quite as large. Ogle, which was at

version 0.9.2 when this issue went to

press, looks set to close the gap.

The project was started by students of

the Chalmers technical university in

Sweden. The welcome page on the Ogle

website [2] is anything but understated:

“Ogle, bringing you what you’ve always

wanted” is the message it puts over.

Masses of Features

Ogle is included with most current dis-

tros. If you prefer to build the program

from the sources, check out [3] for the

downloads, and a list of required and

recommended libraries. After installing

the player, make sure that you enable

DMA mode for your drive to provide

maximum transfer speed.

Ogle has an impressive list of features.

It can display DVD menus, and play DVD

images from disk. This is particularly

useful if you intend to create a video

archive, assuming you have enough disk

space. Ogle recognizes the format, auto-

matically selecting the appropriate

height and width values. The program

also supports searching DVDs by title

and chapter.

Of course, Ogle has all those standard

features that any DVD player needs. This

includes digital sound via SP/DIF, full-

screen mode, and a subtitle display. Ogle

XFree86 On the Way Out?

Linux without a GUI desktop would be

unthinkable. The XFree86 project, with

its founder David Dawes, was mainly

responsible for helping Linux establish

itself as an alternative to the Microsoft

Windows desktop. Ever since version 4.0

removed the need for video adapter

manufacturers to provide X servers for

their own chips, allowing them to pro-

duce dynamically linkable drivers in-

stead, XFree86 has become virtually irre-

placeable.

Recent events have definitely damaged

the project’s reputation. Many major dis-

tributors have announced that they will

no longer be including XFree86 4.4 with

future distribution releases, as the pro-

ject has changed the licensing for this

version [5].

The first sign of problems at XFree86

came when Keith Packard was thrown

out of the core team. The reasons for this

Martin Loschwitz is from a small Ger-

man town called Niederkrüchten and

a developer for Debian GNU/Linux.

Martin’s leisure time is mainly pre-

occupied with activities in the Debian

or GNU community.

June 2004

www.linux-magazine.com

An up-to-date overview of free software and its makers

L inux is great – at least most of the

Free Software Projects

COMMUNITY

ousting were the subject of

heated debates; but the pro-

ject members failed to provide

an official statement. The

most probable reason was

Keith’s harsh criticism of

XFree86’s development struc-

ture. In his opinion, deve-

lopment cycles are too slow,

and the whole process is not

open enough.

The next act occurred last

December, when David Dawes

announced the disbanding of

the core team. Up to that

point, each team had been

responsible for monitoring XFree86, and

assuring coding standards. In a short

email message to the xfre86-developer

mailing list [6] David stated that the

other members of the team had agreed to

his suggestion to disband the team. Ever

since, no members of the project have

been responsible for auditing – with the

notable exception of David Dawes, who

just happens to be the President of the

company that maintains XFree86.

Another report caused turmoil in Janu-

ary, concerning the merger between the

X Consortium [7] and XFree86 to jointly

produced XFree86 in future. Many users

and programmers seemed to favor this

development, that is until David Dawes

personally denied the reports.

vides official Debian develop-

ers with an opportunity to run

for Project Leader.

The potential candidates are

expected to convince the

Debian developers of their

ideas and plans. During the

election campaign, the candi-

dates present a platform

where they can introduce both

themselves and their election

programs. The election proper

was opened on March 20, and

will again go on for three

weeks.

The current Project Leader,

Martin Michlmayr, Gergely Nagy, and

Branden Robinson have again taken

the opportunity to put themselves for-

ward as candidates for the position of

Project Leader. This year, there are only

three candidates, whereas there have

been four the last few years. Just like in

2003, Branden Robinson once more

announced his candidature just prior to

the deadline, causing a commotion in

some circles.

Martin Michlmayr had announced his

candidature at an early stage, and

Gergely Nagy, the third candidate,

announced his candidature just prior to

Branden Robinson’s announcement. As

February 28 deadline approached, it was

unclear until the last minute if Martin

Michlmayr would have any competition.

Since taking up the position in April

2003, Martin Michlmayr has represented

Debian at numerous meetings and other

venues. He also helped promote and

organize the Debian developer

conference, Debconf, and has

addressed numerous internal

issues. The backlog of new

maintainer applicants has been

more or less resolved, and Matt

Zimmermann, who was previ-

ously an assessor on the

security team, was appointed as

a full member of the team dur-

ing Martin Michlmayr’s term of

office.

To support his campaign,

Martin Michlmayr has added

his collection of projects as DPL

to the arguments he already

presented last year [11]. Bran-

den Robinson has completely

reworked his platform from last

server. Fedora is planning to distribute

both X servers in parallel. It seems ques-

tionable as to how long a solution of this

kind can survive.

Criticism has been on the increase for

quite a while now regarding the lack of

true innovations. Also, the Free Desktop

X server [9] looks to be a powerful alter-

native. Ousted developer Keith Packard

has joined forces with the project and is

now working on creating a new X server

with new ideas, along with many former

XFree86 developers.

Debian Leader Election

This year sees the regular election for the

position of the Debian Project Leader.

This election decides who will be

responsible for the Debian project’s fate

in the months to come. The Project Sec-

retary, Manoj Srivastava, announced that

the three-week nomination period would

commence on February 7 [10]. This pro-

No longer GPL compatible

David Dawes is also behind the latest act

in this saga, the license change that

accompanied release candidate 4 for ver-

sion 4.4.

Members of the Debian pro-

ject immediately set about

examining the new license. It

quickly became apparent that

it really is incompatible with

the GPL. Meanwhile, distribu-

tors such as Suse, Red Hat, and

Debian have announced that

they will not be using XFree86

version 4.4.

One should also be aware

that this problem does not only

affect the Linux community;

the OpenBSD developers have

also expressed clear opinions

on the new license [8]. Most

groups are considering using

the Free Desktop project’s X

Figure 2: Many important developers believe that the new XFree86

license is incompatible with the GPL. Most distributors have decided to

revert to the older XFree86 versions instead.

www.linux-magazine.com

June 2004

Figure 1: The Ogle video player. In its most basic state, Ogle only has com-

mand-line controls. Users need to install a GUI themselves.

COMMUNITY

Free Software Projects

year [12]. Branden Robinson was only

narrowly beaten in last year’s election.

He is also looking to score points with

his track record as a devel-

oper, alluding to the fact

that he has maintained the

XFree86 packages for sev-

eral years, and that he is

actively involved with Soft-

ware in the Public Interest

[13].

Gergely Nagy’s platform

should raise a few laughs. It

seems he is not campaign-

ing to win. In fact, Nagy is

actually using his platform

[14] to prevent developers

voting for him. If he wins,

he has promised to disap-

pear immediately.

This year’s DPL election

looks set to be another

neck-and-neck affair bet-

ween Michlmayr and Robin-

son. Developers who voted

for Bdale Garbee last year

might cast the decisive

votes. The election period

ends April 10, 2004. You can

check out the results at [15].

Despite the election battle, Debian

developers have been working hard.

Recent discussions on mailing lists have

once more focused in on a perennial

issue, the Debian non-free directory.

ware Guidelines. Any Debian packages

that contain non-free software are thus

added to the non-free directory. This

directory owes its exis-

tence to the Debian Social

Contract, which dictates

that Debian users and free

software should have pri-

ority. The developers have

agreed on the compromise

of providing the infrastruc-

ture for software which is

not part of the official dis-

tribution.

This directory has been

a perennial subject of

heated discussions. There

are two camps within the

Debian project. One of

them wants to provide

users with as big a se-

lection of software as

possible, the other is in

favor of restricting the

selection to free software,

and would like to see non-

free abolished.

Abolishing non-free

would mean changing the

Social Contract, and a 75 percent major-

ity of the Debian developers is required

to do this.

In a posting to the debian-vote mailing

list [16], Andrew Suffield put forward a

general resolution to remove non-free,

and quickly found the required number

of supporters. Numerous Debian devel-

opers, such as Branden Robinson, and

To re Anderson, gave their approval.

A short time later, Anthony Towns, the

Debian Release Man-

ager, put forward an

alternative proposal. He

suggested that the

Debian project should

reaffirm its support of

the non-free branch

without any changes.

Again a number of

developers expressed

their support.

One thing is for

sure: theoretically, An-

thony Town’s proposal

stands a better chance

being successful. After

all, it would take a 75

percent majority to re-

move the non-free directory from

Debian. Towns is merely asking for con-

firmation of the current status quo. A

simple majority is all it would take to do

just that.

That’s all for this month, folks. Don’t

forget to check out [17] for the election

results. As usual, if you can recommend

a program that you would like to see fea-

tured, why not mail me at [18].

■

INFO

Figure 3: Martin Michlmayr,

the current Debian Project

Leader (DPL).

[1] Penguin bashing: http://www.elek.bydg.

pl/flash/pingwin1/

[2] Ogle website: http://www.dtek.chalmers.

se/~dvd/

[3] Ogle sources: http://www.dtek.chalmers.

se/groups/dvd/downloads.shtml

[4] Okle, KDE GUI for Ogle: http://okle.

sourceforge.net/

[5] XFree86 4.4 license change: http://www.

xfree86.org/pipermail/forum/

2004-January/001892.html

[6] Email from David Dawes: http://www.

mail-archive.com/devel%40xfree86.org/

msg04639.html

[7] The X Consortium: http://www.x.org/

[8] Theo de Raadt on the new Xfree86

license: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/

?l=openbsd-misc&m=107696705911864&

w=2

[9] Free Desktop project: http://www.

freedesktop.org/

[10] Mail from Manoj Srivasta: http://lists.

debian.org/debian-vote/2004/

debian-vote-200402/msg00002.html

[11] Martin Michlmayr’s platform: http://

www.debian.org/vote/2004/platforms/

tbm

[12] Branden Robinson’s platform: http://

www.debian.org/vote/2004/platforms/

branden

[13] Martin Loschwitz,“Projects on the move”:

Linux Magazine, Issue 40, March 2004

[14] Gergely Nagy’s platform: http://www.

debian.org/vote/2004/platforms/

algernon

[15] The DPL election page: http://www.

debian.org/vote/2004/vote_001

[16] Suggested removal of non-free: http://

lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2004/

debian-vote-200401/msg01138.html

[17] The Non-Free General Resolution page:

http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/

vote_002

[18] Tips and suggestions:

projects@linux-magazine.com

Figure 4: Branden Robinson

has also renewed his candi-

dature.

The Non-Free Future

For software to be incorporated into the

official Debian distribution, it must be

free in the sense of the Debian Free Soft-

Figure 5: Programs like Povray might completely disappear from the

Debian distribution in future, as some developers are in favor of abol-

ishing the non-free directory.

June 2004

www.linux-magazine.com

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