glib dependency for the X Server

[Egbert Eich]

Matthieu Herrb writes:
 > Adam Jackson wrote:
 > > On Monday 03 April 2006 11:42, Greg Stark wrote:
 > >> Do any of the closed X server vendors currently ship statically linked
 > >> executables? How would they feel about having to provide linkable objects
 > >> so the user can relink the X server with a new version of the library?
 > > 
 > > Do we really want to continue to encourage closed X?
 > 
 > The MIT/X license is not closed X. It is the really free X.
 > 
 > If the current policy defined in Jim's strawman proposition is going to 
 > change, I'd like to hear about it from the X.Org BoD or in the upcoming 
 > bylaws of the X.Org fundation.
 > 
 > I hope we can avoid forking X again to keep it free.

I also hop that this will be the goal.
We really should take the issue that some packagers have with adding a 
hard dependency to gpl/lgpl software more serious (besides that some 
organizations are providing closed forks of our tree).

The problem really would be the hard dependency: the glibc issue is
different. As AlanC has pointed out it's not a hard dependency on a
particular version of the library but on the API that is provided by
this library. So any version of libc that happens to be available on
a system can be used. On BSD for example X is not using glibc at all.

If we could turn it into an optional dependency that adds a nice feature
to have but no requirement it would probably help to address the issues
that some people raise here.

Cheers,
	Egbert.