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Keith Packard's Xfree86 Fork Officially Started

Reivec writes "I was having a discussion with Keith Packard on IRC about the current developments in the XFree86 Saga and politics already discussed here earlier, and I learned many interesting things. The project has a new website, xwin, and things are getting underway. 'We're in the process of building community, from that we can construct a government. It's a hard process to construct a representative system from what we have now, so it will take a bit of time. Weeks, not months. --Keith'" Read on for some more details. Update: 04/13 03:30 GMT by T : Reader Khalid points to this informative interview with Packard at Linux Weekly News, too. " The site is has only been up a day or so and there isn't a lot on it right now, but he would like to see a lot of community involvement on the site and many user submitted stories to get conversation rolling. A french site has already taken notice and posted some information on xwin as well. Since such a fork could make a large impact on many *NIX users, I felt the need to ask, 'assuming you had an active fork under development, how interchangable would you expect it to be with Xfree (assuming release builds). Do you think distros would be quick to change if it offered improvements? Or could they provide both and have the user choose upon installation?' Keith replied, 'Given that distros will have input into how it gets built, I expect they'd be interested in a version closer to what they need. And, given that RH and Debian maintainers are both actively encouraging changes, it's hard to see how they wouldn't want to follow. (or lead).' So if you have had any interest at all in the XFree86 development, this is definitely a community site you should take advantage of."

11 of 409 comments (clear)

  1. unf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    OMG I GOT THE FIRST POST!!! YESSSS I AM TEH winnar!!! hahahahahajahhaha

    LOOK

    B===========D

    THATS A PENIS!!! I hahahahahahahaha PENISS!!!

  2. fork this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    first post. timothy sucks

    1. Re:fork this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      I just saw a TV commercial for Sirius satellite radio, and they were using "Bear Witness" from Dr. Octagonecologyst as the backing music. Usually I just have the TV on as background noise but this made me sit up and take notice. Good on them, if this won't make 'em profitable I don't know what will.

  3. Re:Uh oh. . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    hows this for totalitarian:

    B===========D ((

    B===((

    B(( -- thats balls deep!

    B======D ~~o ((

  4. Re:Uh oh. . . by Rick+the+Red · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    That's towel. Whatever you do, take care of your towel. Honestly, how did you ever last this long without one? I suppose you've lost your copy of the book, too?

    --
    If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
  5. Re:OSNews... by Cid+Highwind · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Because on Slashdot, we only have to deal with Eugenia's whining once in a while, while it's all over OSnews.

    --
    0 1 - just my two bits
  6. First Lie Post by Lord+Sauron · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    This is another American lie. Keith Packard, American official, is NOT free, he was easily subjugated by our dauntless troops. And he possessed not a fork, but a knife of mass destruction.

  7. help test my media server by r0ck0 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    connect and stay on so i can see what the load handling tolerance is.
    overload

  8. ATTENTION SLASHDOT TROLLS!!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Your services are needed at jesusgeeks.com

    Don't forget to bring along our favourite URL's!

  9. WAGLY! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    All you part timers, remember to use an anonymizer. Our friends at Jesus Geeks are less likely to be shy with the old IP address (In fact, you'd think they're run by that shyster Micheal!)

  10. Re:xwin- Quartz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

    One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

    FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    Fact: *BSD is dying