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XFree86 Core Team Disbands
mumumu was among the many to write with this news: "XFree86's release engineer David Dawes has announced that "a majority of the XFree86 core team has voted in favour of my proposal to disband the core team". XFree86's News Headline has a short message about it. Why, all of a sudden?
What is the successor of the XFree86? Xouvert? freedesktop.org?"
Why would a successor for XFree86 be needed? As I understand it, this is only a change in the "political" structure of the project, not its end.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
Sounds more like the "core" team weren't actually doing the development anymore, and that they felt it was unfair to be the "core" team when they weren't doing the work.
Nothing to see here folks, keep moving.
I think it's related to the "firing" of Keith Packard from the core group, when he was one of the few people trying to move X11 into the 20th century.
The abundance of abandond projects on Sourceforge would appear to disagree with you. Open Source projects are usually NOT the domain of hundreds and thousands of globally diverse developers but rather a very small and very active "core" team. Once that core team leaves (and I'm not talking about XFree86 here) then the project usually dies. Why? Because even though the code is in the public domain there is a lack of willingness to get involved or a lack of skill of those who ARE willing or a lack of time for those who are both skillfull AND willing.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
False. Enterprise financial apps don't depend on changing hardware every year like graphics applications. And "just plain works" doesn't mean is maintainable. And I would doubt very strongly that someone knows 30-year-old-multi-million-lines-apps of financial code in Fortran well enough to be sure that it does what it is supposed to do...
"I think this line is mostly filler"
"Core Team" Development models are out-dated and sound more M$'ish than Open Source'ish.
While several projects continue to use the "Core Team" model, like FreeBSD, in my opinion, the politics involved ain't worth it.
Uh, say again? Are you saying that open source software favors one political structure over another?
So if a core team is bad, what about Linux with essentially a technical dictator^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdirector? And do you believe the MS uses a core team to direct development of their software? They have a simple hierarchy, like most succesful businesses.
While it may be warm and fuzzy to say that open source == no core team, the simple fact is that different political structures are good for different projects during different phases of their life. Linux has gotten too large to be developed by a single developer, so Linus has changed the political structure to fit his needs.
Furthermore, this doesn't mean the end of the core team for XFree, only the end of a core team. They haven't spelled out a change in structure, only a change in personel.
-Adam
Open source development is a Darwinian process. The strong prosper and the weak either die off or adapt themselves to survive in an isolated niche. If a project is so uninteresting or so obscure that it can't attract a new maintainer, then it deserves to die. The carcass remains part of the ecosystem -- scavangers are free to pick the bones for anything useful, or someone can come along and breathe new life into it.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
The disbanding of the current XFree86 core team does not mean an end to the continuing development of XFree86, it means a change of people recongised as being key players.
The biggest remaining question IMHO is whether there will be a expansion of cvs commit access. I think the former core team realises that new up and coming developers need to be added to the project to subtain the continuing improvement and work with others groups such as X.org, and freedesktop.org. To say nothing of expanding access to video card manufacturers so they can maintain and improve open source drivers for their cards (Most companies are at least partial supportive of 2D drivers, the real issues occur over 3D accelation).
I expect it will end up being a good thing.
I think we should congratulate the core team for doing the right thing. Its pretty rare for any institution to volintarily disband no matter how irrelevant it becomes. I can think of a few institutions a lot less relevant than this group that have continued plugging along for generations.
These people are showing maturity and class usually missing in the software industry. Just by taking this action, the team has refuted one of the more subtle FUD points out there, that projects will eventually peter out or be consumed by internal bickering.