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Cygwin/XFree86 Leaving XFree86.org
An anonymous reader writes "The Cygwin/XFree86 project is leaving XFree86.org. For those that don't know, Cygwin/XFree86 is a port of the X Window System to Cygwin (which provides a *nix-like API on Windows). Here is the announcement and the start of the trouble. The XFree86 project has pushed away more developers than most projects ever have - is this the beginning of the end for XFree86?"
If developers are leaving the XFree86 arena, where are they flocking to? Is there a replacement readily available or is one in the works?
I'll certainly say that Xfree86 isn't going anywhere for a while, as it is all over the place now. But I do feel (and others probably do too) that it's about time we 'started again' with something like X but a whole lot neater and simpler.
slashdot story on the topic.
These guys seem to care more about being able to brag about their commit access in their email signatures than streamlining development of their software and making things as easy as possible for those willing to devote their time and talent to the project.
If ever a project was in need of a fork, and if ever some project developers were in need of an attitude readjustment - this is it.
And he presented his case well. These other XFree86 guys sound like the cast from Othello... way too serious for what is, after all, something that's supposed to be fun: working on an open source project.
You know, what kind of nut must it be to crack to get X running atop of Windows? You'd think they'd give Harry some slack just out of the complexity of what he's doing.
Another poster mentioned that it's the fault of the tools, and I think this is a good point. A truly usable code management system would allow for Bozo the Clown to have commit privileges and it wouldn't impact the overall effort at all.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
If I had a dollar for every time I heard that X was going away, I'd be a very wealthy man.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
What this means for XFree86
Some will say nothing. Some will say good riddance. Some will say this is the beginning of the end. Who knows? Who cares? Let /. figure it out.
So uhhhhh... who wants to tackle this one? ;-)
I think it would be best if all these projects that left Xfree86.org united - the Cygwin/Xfree86 folks, Keith Packard, and pull their resources to come up with a workable development model (yeah, and a workable X - all major projects - Gnome, KDE - are waiting for long promised features that all modern graphical subsystems exhibit except for X.)
Actually it was less to do with "Bloating it" and more to do with fixing bugs.
But then I read it.
CJC
how many XFree86 users are using Cygwin port? 1 percent? Let us face it, it is not the "beginning of the end" but is rather the "end of the beginning of the end".
Don't get me wrong, XFree86 is great and all, but I wish there was a replacement. I would be willing to wager that >75% of those of us who run a Linux desktop don't need hardly *any* of the advanced features in the X Windows server. I would like to see a completely modular, X-windows core-compatible windowing system for Linux. Want to use some of the advanced features? Add in the module, recompile, and go!
What this means for XFree86
/. figure it out.
Some will say nothing. Some will say good riddance. Some will say this is the beginning of the end. Who knows? Who cares? Let
Fellowship 9/11
The XFree86 project has pushed away more developers than most projects ever have - is this the beginning of the end for XFree86?
I think not and here's why: I've been working as a consultant for one of the top banks in the US for the last 10 years. One of my roles is to maintain the COBOL-emulator for the VAX systems that we store customer data in. One of the integral pieces, as you may guess, is CygWin. We actively add elements and integrate third-party products with CygWin since it is the best at what it does.
The greatest challenge for our team is to enhance the Win32 abstraction layer so that it no longer interferes with the HAL on a multi-processor layer. We've made some progress and thanks to CygWin we're close to completion.
Which is nice.
One thing that arguably sparsely resourced open source groups need is more fracturing. Now, in addition to doing the porting work, the cygwin/xfree86 porters will need to deal with source and site maintenance. That's just time wasted essentially.
The XFree86 project has pushed away more developers than most projects ever have - is this the beginning of the end for XFree86?
Why the scaremongering, anonymous submitter? Just because one project isn't getting access to XF86's CVS tree and will have to maintain one of their own somewhere else, doesn't mean that everyone will abandon XF86. It's mature, has a ton of features, and has no viable replacement; who is gonna leave and where are they gonna go?
the coolest club on
I've been trying to figure out how to get this fullscreen patch for Cygwin/X into the dist, but the xfree86 dev list tells me to submit to bugzilla. So what, I'm supposed to invent a bug and then solve it? Its a new feature and it would be nice to have a real place to discuss and enhance it (the xfree86 dev list is very aloof and hasn't been kind to me at all as a newbie x developer). I think it's a good move for Cygwin...
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
I wonder... do people say "X is going away" because they think it is, or becasue they hope it is?
#define DRM chmod 000
I can understand their decision. XFree has matured to be a really broken pile of software which is badly maintained after all. There is a known CMS and XLIB locking problem in XFree 4.3.0 and upwards which they reject to fix (and this is known for many months now). Even patches and fixes exist for it and they still reject to fix it. When you use GTK+ 2.3.0 on it then it heavily crashes.
Read here the fixes
I can imagine that there are to many trouble but I think that the remaining people working on XFree are fucking dumbasses and the primary troublemakers here. They threw the major leading developers out, those that liked to bring XFree up to new roots, fix many bugs, make it modern. And what do we have now ?
Xouvert as lame fork with people who may not be able to deal with it.
XFree as a lameass project full of bugs they not gonna fix, full of people who slowly develop it and who use old versions of xcursor, freetype, fontconfig and stuff like this. Ignore bugreports and fixes
FreeDesktop org as last bastion for people like Keith Packard and Jim Gettys to fix all the stuff.
I think we should start to boycott XFree.
Let's just say they make *BSD look alive.
This will trigger 100 posts that mistakenly refer to it as X Windows.
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
Java, emacs and XML all suck.
illegitimii non ingravare
Remember when Gnome split from KDE? They fully intended to end KDE, yet today both are powerful desktop systems that have benifited from each other. (Last I cheked you can't even complile KDE with a couple GNOME libs - code reuse in action)
For that matter, linux was the end of BSD, or perhaps we should say OpenBSD was the end of NetBSD. Take your pick of history, BSD is alive in well despite what some anonymous cowards would have you believe.
This is a good thing, XFree86 has gotten a lot of criticism, let the critics go their own speerate ways and each prove their way is best. In the end the best way wins, or if there is no best way, all survive, and each focuses on the areas where its way of doing things is best.
Wow. It's obvious that you've been following this really closely. Bloat like updated drivers, bugfixes, and other fetures that everyone else has certainly do not belong in XFree86. I hope the XFree86 developers stick by their guns and refuse evil bloatware like back-buffers, vector graphics, and portability.
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
...because XFree86 isn't bloated at all, no, of course not ;)
disclaimer: this is not a troll post! i'm running Xfree86 right now!!
The reason the push developers away is that many of these guys are trying to bloat xfree to hell
Have any proof to back that statement up?
Harold was requesting CVS commit access only for bugs that pertained to Cygwin only -- they had no impact on other platforms. Hell, if properly ifdef'd they wouldn't even compile into the binaries on other platforms. That doesn't mean they're not bugs though, and it doesn't mean they shouldn't be fixed in the main tree.
We're not talking about features here. And there's a long line of people that have tried to get XFree86 to fix bugs -- either in the core or in drivers -- that have not only been denied commit access but also had their fixes ignored, their questions ignored, and been passively shoved aside when trying to get things fixed. The number of actually active developers (i.e. - number of people with commit access and are actually spending time on the project) on XFree86 is absurdly low for the size of the project.
No.
That was easy! Ask me another one!
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
From the Xouvert HOWTO on the very link you posted above:
--
1.1 What is Xouvert?
Contrary to popular opinion, Xouvert is not a fork of the XFree86 project.
Xouvert wishes to provide a development branch of XFree86. What this means is, Xouvert is an attempt to create, implement, test, and bring new features and ideas to XFree86 sooner.
Xouvert has now just started. Currently, Xouvert simply is XFree86. The purpose of this document is to help people get to a point where they can help contribute to Xouvert.
-><- no
I like Xfree. But it's still basically X. The problem I have with X is that it's overkill for most client desktops. It's nice that X allows remote windowing. But how many users actually need that? (I'm ignoring the security implications this has as well.) The reality is that 99.9% of X applications have both the client application and X server on the same machine. So why have such a complicated networking layer to draw a window on a screen? Seems like a lot of unnecessary overhead to me.
I seem to remember there was a move to streamline X given this new reality. But I don't know what it's called. Could someone fill me in?
When all else fails, run.
Xouvert is a development branch of the Xfree86 source tree. It's purpose is to provide wide testing and integration for third party patches, and to test and stabilize innovative new ideas for submission to the main Xfree86 branch.
It's an interesting phenomenon associated with free software: enough talented developers get the perception that the current people in control are being unreasonable about release schedules, overall direction, features, bugs, indenting styles, etc. and fork their own branch.
A closely-related parallel here is how the egcs folks wanted greater ability to change the gcc codebase than the gcc developers wanted to do.
Then, the egcs branch took off so famously that later it essentially became the gcc development branch.
May the best X branch become the tree trunk.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
If you actually followed X or even the discussion linked to for 5 minutes you'd realized that it is NOT the problem at all.
The problem as cited through the list is that the core developers do not allow external commits by major commiters like the entire Xwin cygwin port.
These people have to wait weeks for any changes to possibly show up in the CVS because the core developers don't have time for it.
The core dev's answer: Shut up and stop complaining we are doing the best we can.
This has nothing to do with bloat and everything to do with control and workload.
Bye!
XUOVERT is that replacement. Let Xfree86 burn in hell and lets make a fork. I'm sick of reading stories about how the Xfree core people are preventing drivers from being commited and closing themselves off to the world, if they dont want developer support we should fork Xfree86 and compete with them, if they are so good at coding that they make a better Xfree86 than the community does well props to them, but if they don't, well they lose. Survival of the fittest. XOUVERT
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
I wonder... do people say "X is going away" because they think it is, or becasue they hope it is?
I'd wager my bet on that in general people don't have a slightest clue..
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
Among XFree86's other problems is the apparent lack of any sort of regression testing. I only upgrade XFree86 when I'm forced to because of upgrading my Linux distribution, and over the years, about half the time this has caused something to break that used to work, causing me to lose many hours and days over the course of weeks trying to fix the problem.
No, the problem you imagine simply does not exist because X already has the "shared memory extension" to make it possible to write directly into the X-server's graphics memory bypassing the socket communications. In any case, XFree86 uses domain sockets for all local communications. Domain sockets are implemented extremely efficient on Linux. It is definitely not sockets that are causing any delays you may see on your user-interface. It is likely you are using a GNOME or KDE application which is badly implemented whether in itself or in the toolkit on which it is based.
"security implications this has as well"
No, there is no security problem. X defaults to have closed network access. Every PC should also use a firewall which provides a separate stronger access control mechanism. Nobody should be able to access your X-server remotely unless you have explicitly given them permission.
Scroogle
That is a nice post you referenced but, posting ONE link in one thread of communication between two parties does not provide the context or big picture that lead to that. Basically you should not create judgement off of this alone. With the exception of journalism and campaign speeches, this principal should apply to anything in life.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Seems clear that that David Dawes guy is just an egomaniac jerk... If I was working on that project, and he was acting in that manner in representing the project, I'd sure as hell quit the project.
I sure hope the project does die, and Mr. David Dawes can be king of his sandcastle, with nobody to play with... What an attitude.
Bloat! There is a x86 emulator in the XFree86 source. The source is in .../xc/extras/x86emu.
Being the fool that I am - I told Keith Packard that my new fast box would build the xfree86 xserver in 25 min. He then showed me that his old 300Mhz laptop could build his version of the xserver in 5 min. He said it was because he didn't have a lot of bloat - no x86 emulator or unicode conversion. His xserver is also a lot smaller.
Yeah, guys like Keith Packard were just bloating Xfree!
In fact, it seems that KP was just about the only guy who was passionate about Xfree and REALLY worked on it. I didn't know whether I should laugh or cry when I saw KP being flamed by David Wexelblat (one of the founder of Xfree) in Xfree mailinglist. It was sad/funny because while Wexelblat was busy flaming KP, he also mentioned that he does not even use Xfree there days, let alone hack it! He uses Windows these days!
So, Guys like Keith Packard get kicked out, while useless deadbeats like David Wexelblat are members of the core-team. What's wrong with this picture?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
The X network layer is not a "bloated" bolt-on kit or added feature that someone wedged into X as a gimmick... X is itself just a specification for a data stream, like umpteen other protocols you have in your /etc/services file. At its core it is really quite simple and lightweight.
Furthermore, when the client and server are on the same machine, the data stream is NOT sent over the network, but is routed through local UNIX sockets or shared memory, making X essentially as slow or as fast as your system bus and graphics hardware. Only when you actually separate client and server on to different machines does X use the network sockets.
Overhead is simply not a factor on an average Linux desktop.
This feature bloat everyone is frightened of is in other places, like for example the KDE and GNOME architectures and the desire of most users to drown in pixmaps and theme engines.
With that said, on my own Linux desktop (a lowly 900MHz PIII) I use KDE 3 and play Quake III and so on and I don't find it to be any slower than Windows 2000.
Maybe there is just a small crowd (the ones who keep submitting "3D site" or "hardware site" stories) who won't feel elite at LAN parties until their Linux box can beat Windows boxen by at least 6fps in frame rate tests, 403fps. vs. 397fps.... and they're somehow convinced that if they can just get rid of that damn protocol and somehow drop "abstract" graphic ideas directly into video memory rather than organizing and processing them, that extra 6fps will be forthcoming.
Meanwhile, the rest of us continue to use the god-send network features of X to administer large installations from a single point of access, or to deploy narrow-application thin clients at greatly reduced cost.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
X has lots of problems, but the network transparency is NOT one of them. This is a myth that comes up all the time, by amateurs that somehow picture it calling a central server at MIT for every graphics call.
On a mondern system (with security) there HAS to be a context switch some time between a user program producing the graphics and the system drawing on the screen. The network transparency adds zero overhead on any modern system, in fact it encourages reduction of overhead by forcing the batching of requests into single context switches. When anybody says that Windows can do each call in 1 context switch, I have to point out that X (if it was properly designed to not require so damn many syncrhonous calls) can do tens of thousands of calls in 2 context switches.
X's #1 problem is the bad graphics model which means that drawing anything more complicated that 1985 graphics (such as anti-aliased shapes) requires you to draw an image and send it, which is going to be slow even if the app could draw directly into the on-screen image buffer.
X's #2 problem, and really the cause of perceived slowness, is that seperate window manager, and people are going to have to face reality and move the window borders and resizing and all other drawing into the app's toolkit, so that synchronization between that and the rest of the app's display can be preserved. Notice that nobody complains that moving things inside the apps is slow.
Mirror of the trouble-starter thread.
I think it is time we make a more userfriendly, windowmanager-specific GUI for Linux/FreeBSD/etc. Make a unified interface for linux and other derivatives, then see if it is accepted. Make it like windows where all you see the whole time is the user interface, to make it better for the desktop world, some say that choice is good, and the ability to run programs remotely is good, but now days for the average desktop user, this is not very practical, and choice is becoming randomness since there is no standard user interface guideline for Linux. Lets make someone like MacOS X for x86, but based on Linux: fast, easy, etc. I could help with UI development, etc if anyone is interested in starting a project, I'm not much for coding though. Linux needs somthing original.
Sig: I stole this sig.
No, that is not it at all.
The xoncygwin project on SourceForge is unrelated to the current discussion. That was setup in 2001, if you noticed the "Registered" date.
SourceForge makes you pick licenses used by the project, so I picked GPL (which Cygwin uses) and MIT for the X Window System portion of the project.
The current issue is not a fork, nor is it anything that Cygwin or Cygnus had anything to do with. I am Harold Hunt. I am not Cygnus, nor amy I affiliated with Cygnus: I made this decision on my own. Licensing is not part of the current issue at all.
Just wanted to clear that up.
Harold
Is their problem with X that they don't release under the GPL?
Their problem is probably exactly what they said.
Why is it that GNU sees the need to fork *everything*?
Like what? Cygwin is not a particularly GNU project, and XFree86 has always explicitly been given support under its current license by RMS.
And who are these myriad other developers that have been turned off by the X group?
How many times does Xouvert need to be mentioned in this thread?
I can see arguments that X is unwieldy and archaic, fine
RTFA. That has nothing to do with it; it's a management problem, not codebase problem.
I think hard-working open-source developers are often neglected, particularly for things like this, which started over adamant refusal of CVS access to someone effectively maintaining a platform.
CVS access is like giving someone the keys to the T-Bird. Everyone's excited to get it, but the parents are always terrified the kid will crash into a tree...and wreck the T-Bird (aww, don't worry, the kid will be FINE...). But CVS has this marvelous feature. You can create tags, and still quickly get around botched commits.
I work on an open-source game (I'm not going to plug it), and most of my commits revolve around a particular area, but occasionally I go over and revamp the configure.in/Makefile.am system and rip out all of the cruft. Ah, there's something nice about that efficiency, but...I could just as easily make it unusable if I made a large commit and didn't check everything first.
But that comes to my other point. You have to appreciate HOW much time each developer puts in. Some will only put in an hour every month or two, while some will simply stay and work on something, a dozen hours a day (or equivilent for their busy life), until it's done, even if small, like autoconf/automake files. Even a relatively unnoticable change from a user's perspective can have huge developer benefits, and people often forget that. Some developers will go for every last user-noticable feature, and some, perhaps like me, will often help out the other developers as much as they can, so that they can be more productive. Project leads often don't realize what a difference that makes until six months after a commit. *grins sheepishly at her 'boss'*
So this IS the end then.
If I'd been contributing for closing in on 3 years, and got insulted by asshole core devs when I asked for commit access, I'd blow up too.
Man, I hope so. But it seems like we get a chance to say that every couple of months or so, when yet more devs leave the main XFree86 project, and nothing's come of it yet.The context to harold hunt saying "go fuck yourself" to Thomas Dickey:
Thomas Dickey says:
"well, when you graduate and (presumably) find a real job, you'll have a chance to get an idea of where time goes. the patches _are_ applied, right?"
Which is an extremely rude thing to say to anyone. Even more so when Harold has already spent several emails explaining, and also is apparently currently suffering some fairly serious medical problem.
"When you are in a graduate degree program and working 30-40 hours per week, that is a *lot* of time."
"Seriously, I don't know why I waste my time submitting patches that are specific to my platform and then wait up to three weeks for them to be committed."
"Can I please finally be given CVS commit access with the understanding that I am a moron and that I will only commit things that are cygwin specific,..."
All he wants is the ability to commit to CVS for the module that he is the expert on, and David Dawes and Thomas Dickey are unfriendly, insulting and rude to him. Not exactly a good way to run an open-source project. Did they not read the Cathedral and the Bazaar?
http://www.microwindows.org/
has xlib support, with very little or no bloat.
gonna try to use it for either an included app or and add-on to my floppy based distro (it's only a 100k server)
The main problem with XFree86 is the developers are trying to create a closed environment for a somewhat open project, they dont want any changes besides their own. even if the suggested changes are better than anything the developers could ever pull out of their asses, and they do this whilst adding features no one will really ever use, I dont see too many people even using X as a network graphics system, people usually use a vnc to do all their work with, people use X as a local graphics system, so, what's needed is that someone needs to include a graphics system that does what a graphics system should do. run graphical apps, xfree runs just about anything under the sun.
there's some functions I like in xfree, but, a lot of them I see as useless.
and that's what many "outside" developers think, and when they try to make a change, or add a new feature or even try to optimise the code, they get told to shut the hell up and go back to fiddling with their little bits of code.
Basically, the Xfree86 devs are afraid of any change that isnt their own. Afraid the change will break their work or put them out of the spotlight of ego, basically their position on the project.
Fresco has been bogged down in Alpha status for the last 5 years. Some people think that the only reason it is so slow in development is because no-one knows about it.
But the real reason is because Fresco sucks and no one wants to touch it with a 10 foot pole. If you think X is bloated, Fresco is 10 times worse. Its an over-engineered solution heavily reliant on C++, CORBA, GGI, and other crap.
X does suck, but 90% of the basic design of X is excellent. A new windowing system should focus on keeping the basic design, while (a) eliminating legacy crap that no one needs anymore, and (b) adding the stuff we DO need like Drag and Drop, Transparency, AA fonts, 3D, etc.
-- LD
He only flew off the handle in response to stupifying and insulting statements made towards him as he was ASKING to be given CVS commit access to save everyone time and effort. I believe his "don't reply to me" email was simply a sarcastic response to the other guy being WAY overreactive, not meant seriously.
If I were being sincere and asking for help, it sure would piss me off to have random people wander into the the discussion and start insulting me for no reason.
If anything XFree's behavior is immature and unprofessional. Rubbing it in to a volunteer that he doesn't have a "real job" is no way to ATTRACT VOLUNTEERS. Duh.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?