On Wed, 26 Jan 2000, Brian Paul wrote:
> I didn't even know that freeglut existing until this morning.
Yep. It hasn't been well advertized - and it's very new.
> What exactly are the terms of Mark's copyright on GLUT?
It's in the file 'NOTICE' in the top of the GLUT distro.
It says:
"NOTICE: The OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT) distribution contains source
code published in a book titled "Programming OpenGL for the X Window
System" (ISBN: 0-201-48359-9) published by Addison-Wesley. The
programs and associated files contained in the distribution were
developed by Mark J. Kilgard and are Copyright 1994, 1995, 1996 by Mark
J. Kilgard (unless otherwise noted). The programs are not in the
public domain, but they are freely distributable without licensing
fees. These programs are provided without guarantee or warrantee
expressed or implied."
This has historically been taken to mean that you can't MODIFY GLUT
and redistribute it.
Jon Leech has tried to get Mark to clarify that - he mailed me the
word from Mark himself:
Mark Kilgard wrote:
> Jon Leech wrote:
> > One word would suffice: can people modify and redistribute the GLUT
> > source code under its current copyright? Yes or no?
>
> The answer is YES. Just call it something other than GLUT if you
> plan to rerelease it. Preserve the copyright notice. Don't slap a GPL
> on it and your in business. You can introduce all the bugs, VRML
> support, audio, whatever. Just please don't make it sound like I endorse
> it or that it is GLUT.
So you have to change the name - and not make it sound like it is
GLUT - which means you can't have it be 'libglut.a' - because that
certainly makes it sound like it is GLUT. If there was no truly,
cleanly open substitute, then I might be tempted to go to all the
trouble of making changes to GLUT and calling it GLOP or something.
But since we have freeglut, and it works well, why not simply dump
the weird license restrictions and move on? freeglut uses the Xfree
license which is unambiguous and fits better with Mesa and Xfree
itself.
> I don't see an urgency to replace GLUT with freeglut in the
> Mesa distro.
Well, I don't think it's *urgent* either - but even non-urgent things
have to be done sometime - and Mesa 3.4 seems like the perfect time
to me.
GLUT really does need some fixes and some minimal enhancements though...
eg
* Breaking the 'glutMainLoop' thing so you don't have to be
strictly event-driven. That is the number one reason why
some people won't use GLUT. (freeglut has this)
* Allowing a clean way to have code that runs after the last
GLUT window is closed. (freeglut has this)
* Fix the joystick code so it works under Linux (freeglut
already has this).
* Change the joystick API so you can have multiple
joysticks.
* Provide texturemapped fonts for speed.
* The 'gameGLUT' fullscreen mode was never properly
finished - I don't think it works well/at-all for X.
* It needs to be switched from 'imake' to 'autoconf/automake'
(freeglut has this)
* The GLUT code is cluttered with stuff that *NOBODY* uses
like the SGI 'dials-and-buttons' box. That junk could be
usefully cleared out. (And of course that stuff isn't in
freeglut in the first place).
...none of these are really a very big deal for an OpenSourced
package - once freeglut is accepted into the OpenGL community
as a permenant replacement for GLUT, I'm sure we'll see a lot of
improvements in a short time. We just need to gently push aside
the retired Cathederal designer and start moving those Bazaar stalls
into place!
Having Mesa bundle freeglut would go a long way to providing
that acceptance.
> I'd like to get 3.2 finished in the next couple weeks
> and release 3.3 beta at about the same time.
Seems like reasonable timing to me...but it's your call of
course. I wouldn't expect it to be in 3.2 - and if we put
it into 3.3, and it all screwed up for some reason, we could
back it out again in plenty of time for 3.4.
(I should point out that I didn't have anything to do with
the development of freeglut - except that I donated my
collection of portable joystick drivers. I'm a convert to
freeglut because it's "The Right Thing")
Steve Baker (817)619-2657 (Vox/Vox-Mail)
Raytheon Systems Inc. (817)619-2466 (Fax)
Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.hti.com
Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
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