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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?"
because /. is a tabloid; it prefers shocking headlines to accurate and factual ones. in this way more people are likely to read the stories and be exposed to the ads -> profit.
I wouldn't panic yet.
Boy, what a party pooper. That was the problem with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
"Don't Panic."
Come on. Adventure is 90% boredom and 10% sheer terror. If you take the panic out of travel all you're left with is the boredom. You might just as well stay home and watch golf on TV where at least you get to sit in your own comfy chair.
Now this story is like bungee jumping. Why is bungee jumping so popular? Because, like Roller Coasters, you get to experience that sheer terror under conditions that actually entail no more risk than your commute to work. Maybe less.
But you get to tell people about it as if the risk were real:
"Yeah, it was scary, I jumped off a cliff."
Far more impressive than:
"I took my life in my hands today. It was awful. I drove to work. I could have died."
So let people have their fun, get a little adreneline pumping, run around, scream, wave their hands in the air and so on. It's all in good fun and they'll get to tell their grandkids all about how they survived the great XFree scare at the dawn of 2004 in the new millenia.
It's not like their grandkids will take them seriously anyway.
KFG
Far more impressive than: "I took my life in my hands today. It was awful. I drove to work. I could have died."
That all depends on what you drive and how fast you drive it. And, of course, what exactly "work" is.
MORTAR COMBAT!
If someone is looking for alternatives, look at XGGI, part of the the GGI project. Together with directfb or KGI(currently focussing at BSD, but the Linux core is there too) it's really powerfull.
Sorry, but I wouldn't give you write access to CVS just because you made another twirly colours theme.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Just because the source is available doesn't mean just anyone can understand it. If an open source project with a small team of developers who know the program inside and out leave, for all intents and purposes the project will die, just like a commercial product would, since it is unlikely that another group of individuals that understand the source as well as the previous group will pop up (after all, if they did, they would've been committing source in the first place!)