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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.
"core team was no longer
representative of the active, experienced and skilled XFree86 developers"
That leads me to suspect it isn't XFree86 that is dying, just the current core team is giving up their posts- and probably to be reorganized with new members from among the referred to "active, experienced... developers"
I wouldn't panic yet.
This has nothing to do with XFree developement. In fact the non-relation between XFree 'core team' and Xfree development was the actual reason to dispand.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
It will be called XX.
But I suggest you wait a bit for what will replace XX!
Is this related to the Cygwin/XFree86 blowup a few months back?
That is a relief, as I almost thought for a second that XFree86 was going to disappear... *eek*
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
A lot of big companies still use COBOL, and COBOL is over fifty years old, which means we can keep using X even if it's not being developed anymore. If something is worth using, then it must have a good solid base which can be used for many years to come. We don't need to worry at all for another fifty year or so, when we'll probably need a new system. Why panic now?
Many systems have lived beyond their original development schedules. Financial software written in COBOL, for example, which has caused no problems at all since it was developed, Windows 3.1 which is still more than good enough for most schools and small businesses and has no security flaws despite all thsi time, and the B programming language, which many an OS kernel is written in.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Read the message:
I believe that this is an acknowlegement that the core team was no longer representative of the active, experienced and skilled XFree86 developers, or a place where technical discussion happens.
In effect, nothing is going to change. There are still active, experienced and skilled XFree86 developers out there, who will continue to work just as they always have.
read.
the.
exceedingly.
short.
article.
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
then perhaps it's a good thing as there has clearly been a fair amount of rankling lately.
Wasn't this what Keith Packard et.al wanted?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Face it.
"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.
For XFree86, it's time for change. Hopefully, in years to come, we will see a more efficient graphics subsystem for Unix (MacOS X may be an example) weather it be by a XFree86, XF86 Fork, or some other system (NOT framebuffer because fb doesn't work well with some hardware)
Maybe you should understand what we are talking about here before you predict anything.
The XFree86 core team (of which some of them isn't even *nix users anymore) have been disbanded because of there lack of interest in the project. It's really no big deal for XFree.
*sigh* must we be blamed for everything?
::)
We've seen that code and it's not like ours, if you're looking for your core group you might want to check the looney bin.
-- taking over the world, we are.
with NC-17?
...
No, we need more of those people as well.
You've got to understand, that whatever your archievements are, that doesn't entitle you to behave as a moron. For example, I have great respect for Alan Cox. But, if I ever see him trolling slashdot while I have points, I'm going to mod him down.
The thing that the X team did were great of course, but lately all I've been hearing of them is that they got lazy, advertised their CVS privileges as if it was some god-given privilege, while not doing almost anything at all with it, and made it difficut for people who were at that time doing much more useful work the possibility of making it easier. I'm very glad to hear that now they finally recognized that they were only stalling the development.
Having created something Open Source shouldn't mean that you're free to be dictator of that thing. In Open Source this especially makes little sense, because the point of it is the development of a program, not the exhaltation of its authors. I remember that Linus himself said once that if he believes that Linux will advance better without him, he will resign.
Putting out this news to get more information is not trolling!!!
BTW, xfree86.org's website is now slashdoted.
This is are opputunity, to Kombine, Konquer and rise to a new age in GUI design!
Look at the projects such as KDE 3.2 beta, Cairo, Looking glass, Karamba for example. They are researching new and innovative GUI's, but there is one problem, the X11 limitations are hurting them. Some of them are pushing X11 to the limit, looking at some sourcecode gives me nightmares!
Xouvert, KDE, Gnome and all other interested parties should join up to make it happen.
We need to update and break the current X11 protocal since there is a lot of kludges and write a new faster one, call it X12, unify GTK, Qt, Motif and more into one universal licencing freindly toolkit to run on X12. Integrate all the new technology such as vector widgets, antialasing, and stuff into this X12 toolkit and to symbolise this new change, rename it K12. There should be X11 compatibillity layer, like Mac OS Classic on OS X, just for the old apps such as propreitrey ones.
Then release KDE 4, rewritten in K12, along with the enhancements. K12 should be similar to an existing toolkit so it will be easy to port applications such as Gimp, OpenOffice, Mozilla and the rest. Since there is no more licencing issues with the new toolkit, no need to have seperate gnome/kde anymore, just one desktop environemnt. This will make things consistent, and allow stuff like copy and paste work PERFECTLY!
Then, integrate with Linux 2.6, and other technologies to make the Open Source Desktop dream come true : One unified desktop that is easy to use, yet MORE powerful than the command line.
This Neo-GUI plan may feel unreal, and maybe almost imposible with all the holy wars between X11, KDE, Gnome, and the others, but XouverK could come true if we realise we are only hidering ourselfs as of now! For example, why dosen't gimp use the KDE file dialog!
I'm going to forego the opportunity to use my moderator points today on this story because every odd-numbered post in the list is already "Score:5 Insightful". There's just a wealth of wisdom here, and I have precious little to add.
In all fairness to those who questioned the future of X, I was momentarily confused by the announcement, too. It appears this little group of developers has finally just gotten out of the way. I'm hoping there's still a person or two to moderate code additions while the rest of the community keeps up the project.
-j
Any switch can blow up if a transition isn't well-planned or done with the right expertise. In my experience, major shifts like that require a lot of training of existing staff while bringing in a number of consultants that are fluent in the new tech.
True, choosing a product that is a poor fit will make it blow up in your face, but that doesn't mean that sticking with the old code forever is the answer.
Besides, we use SAP at my place of work and are pretty damn successful.
signatures are for fools with hands
Hey, just sharing what I know..Jesus. Go and throw a hissy fit why don't you.
I spent alot of time with the Xouvert crew. From what I understand, Xouvert was formed largely out of this same frustration -- Neither developers nor companies could even get a word in edgewise with them, with means the whole project sits and stagnates... Well, until things like today's event, that is.
The core team dissolving is a good thing, as I see it. It clears the way for XFree to be less Cathedral and more Bazaar.
Bowie J. Poag
Looking at Xouvert and XServer there are quite a few people interested in maintaining and continuing XFree86. As far as I can see it the whole old structure of XFree86 and the Core-Team was one of the main issues holding the progress back, making it extremly difficult to get code merged into the core tree and such. Sure it will take a while until the dust has cleaned up, but a big clean-sweat is really needed for XFree86, its IMHO one of the main issue that hold GNU/Linux as a whole back from moving onto the cassual users desktop.
Do the BSDs use some X server I don't know about?
Yea, like most CIOs get their tech, political, and business news from /. You grossly overestimate /.'s influence.
FreeSpeech.org
How will XFree maintain control without the bureaucracy?
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.
I think you're thinking of David Wexelblat.
fragmentation could be a real concern.
Multiple X implementations for Linux is not a problem. In fact it could be an advantage. The claim that it becomes harder for vendors like ATI and NVidia to target the platform is of course wrong. They only have to support one of them. So what if we end up in a situation where ATI users will need one X server and NVidia users will need another X server? As long as both X servers implement the correct protocol. Different features of course could be a problem to some extent, but since we are talking about different hardware it's obvious, that there will be differences. If it is going to happen, I hope both forks stay open (is that required by the license used by XFree86?), at least if it is open a new branch can try to merge the two if divergence become too much.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
gcc.
gcc was dormant, Cygnus picked it up and forked off egcs.
egcs is now known as gcc 3.
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.
Back in the day Xfree86 needed to be a corporation to trademark the term "Xfree86" so they created this weird organization with a constitution and everything. There was the board and there was the core. Later another group was added, people who had commit access to the CVS repository, but weren't on the core. Then at the bottom there were regular developers.
The problem is that no one really new what the core does except that it had a private email list. Even people on the core didn't know. (I'm not making this up).
Historically XFree86 has had closed developement. If you wanted to read the developers emails or look at the development code you had to apply and be approved. A couple years ago they openned up the CVS repository to the world. Then earlier this year they openned up all the development email lists.
But once in a while when during code discussions people would say, "Oh that. We discussed on the core email list and we decided it sucked. Case closed." That kind of thing gets annoying.
Some people said that the core email list should be destroyed, but the answer was that, "Why do you care? All the development discussion is on the developers email list." This was probably true in theory if not in real life.
To be on the core you had to be selected after coding for 3 or 4 years. It's not worth it really because as I said, no one knows what the core does and all the real power is held by the people with CVS commit access anyway.
The whole idea of a core group was stupid and pointless. The reason it stuck around for so long was that XFree86 developers are stubborn people. Everyone (often not developers) was telling them to change and have elections and so they said, "Screw you. We'll do whatever we want." Another reason was that some people on the core group weren't active developers and didn't follow the lists closely. They didn't realise how frustrated people were.
I've been getting more and more upset as I write this post thinking about how XFree86 used to be, but I started out just wanting to say that it was a good thing. I believe it is a good thing for XFree86. It's a sign that the project is becoming more transparent and responsive to developers. It takes humility on the part of the core members to give up the extra privileges.
This is a good thing for everyone.
I think we really need a new X server, dedicated to desktop use. It looks like the RENDER model is going to be the primary graphics model these days and applications expect both multithreading and lots of bitmap storage from the X server.
Yet, the existing X server originated out of a code base that highly optimized the traditional X11 graphics model and assumed a completely different mix of clients and applications. That means that a lot of complexity in the existing server is devoted to optimizing things few people still care about.
A new implementation could replace that code with simple, generic implementations and focus on making the stuff that everybody uses these days efficient.
It may also be worth using C++ for such a new X server. That's not because C++ is "object oriented", but because C++ standardizes a number of facilities that big software systems need, like exceptions and resource cleanup, but for which C has no single standard.
Actually, at the same time, it might also be good to create a second, minimal X server from scratch that is aimed at handhelds and machines with very limited resources. Some existing work on such servers is based on XFree86, but I suspect one might be able to cut things down to an X server that gets by with 100-200k of code and data with careful coding and choice of features.
If anybody was honestly curius about what this meant, you might have checked the mail archives of the devel list. Here is a more detailed message from David Dawes. 'Nuff said.
I suspect many people (ie the CIO we are trying to win over) will react badly to this.
This happens all the time in both the closed world and the OSS world.
Remember the big "tiff" between Alan and Linus? It was ridiculus that the press picked it up.
Likewise, at the large companies that I have worked at are far worse than what is happening. At USWest, a VP had to be physically restrained and removed from the premise, and only THEN was fired (he was later found to have a handgun in his desk, but that little info was kinda kept quiet).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
The fdo.o X server is most likely going to be the successor to XFree86, even if development of XF86 continues. They fd.o X server project is led by Keith Packard, who did a lot of the work on Render and Xft, basically bringing XFree86 into the 20th century. He is also getting help from people who really know what they are doing, like Jim Gettys. They are working on the following features:
- A core X server based on the lightweight kdrive codebase (formerly TinyX).
- Back-buffering of all windows, like OS X. This will enable OS X-style fancy window effects like shadows and whatnot.
- OpenGL accelerated 2D rendering. This is a big step up from Apple's system, because it will accelerate actual drawing via OpenGL, not just window compositing. As a result of this, there is a lot of talk about seperating OpenGL from the X server, and allowing the X server to be just another OpenGL app running on top of a low-level OpenGL acceleration layer.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
It seems that the tone of this article is misleading; X development will continue on in good health.
However, I always find myself thinking about Y as an X replacement. It's certainly not the most mature option out there, but reading throught the PDF is a pleasure, as the author seems to have struck a great balance of power and simplicity.
Cheers.
Not just the software, but I mean the development. It's development by committee. Look at the rapid pace of the Linux kernel--headed by one guy.
Compare to XFree86 and its Board of Directors, Consortium, Core team, etc. And then people wonder why there is frustration at the slow pace of development. I'm not even talking about retardedly simple things like RandR (a feature even Windows 95 had close to a decade ago).
"Sufferin' succotash."
That's what is wrong with the support industry. Lazy asses who don't take pride in their work and have little or no patience. Way back in 94 when I was a Windows n00b, I used to call support and was appalled at how bad it was. Adaptec, S3, Microsoft... they all sucked. Within a year of using Windows (originally a Mac and Atari/Amiga guy here) I became my own support because I knew more than any of the jackasses on the other end of the phone. What really used to irk me was when I would call and have to walk through all the crap solutions that they were reading from a database even though I'd already done all of that. I'd tell them I already knew the outcome but they wanted me to do it anyway. Then in the end they would say "fdisk, format and re-install". Of course I wouldn't do that. I would dig up the info online or form other users and eventually solve the problem. That's when I realized that the fools that work support are just plain lazy, but your comment cinches it.
I deal with stupid users every day where I work, but I still help them even if it's the upteenth millionth time. I don't expect them to understand or to know what to do. Face it. Computers are STILL to hard to use for the average user because they are very complex machines. The only people that have a prayer of being able to use a computer to it's full capabilities are people who are very good at deductive logic and can understand abstractions easily. This is NOT the average human being. It's probably only about 10% of the population. About 75% would be the people who learn by wrote. They just know what buttons to puch when, but don't know why. So people and computers are meeting halfway, but when something doesn't work, it all falls apart. Face it... computers STILL suck for the majority of the population. (Note that the other 15% I didn't mention are comprised of both the guys with the bulbous heads who can do advanced physics calculations at 245 MIPS in their wetware and the other end of the spectrum with the small cranium that has trouble turning on a light and votes for George W. Bush because that's what TV told them everyone else is doing.)
Anyway... I guess a big part of the "American way" (these days read that as the way capitlist countries act) is to be lazy. Make millions while you sleep, yadda yadda...
Un-news
From here and here:
"XFree86 I helped create it, along with David Dawes, Jim Tsillas, and Glenn Lai. I haven't done any work on XFree86 in about five years, but I'm still on the Core Team, and on the Board of Directors, and I kibitz a lot. " and "...but I'm a Windows user, not an Open Source user (hence why this page is built with FrontPage)"
Whoa Keanu... that link you posted clears up the news release for me quite a bit. I can forgive anyone for choosing to run Windows if they need/prefer to... everyone has different values and goals. But if a core team member has disavowed Open Source altogether and builds his simple website in Windows and Frontpage... perhaps a shakeup of the core team was more required than an outsider like myself could ever guess.
501 Not Implemented
You say X doesn't suck, but then explain how it doesn't fully utilize graphics cards.
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X doesn't not fully utilize graphics cards because it can't, but because manufacturers don't make optimized graphics drivers for it. If you use vendor-written ones like NVIDIA's, you'll see what X can really do given quality drivers. With proper drivers, X's drawing performance is easily comparable to the GDI's, an for stuff like bit-blits, it attains performance that you can only get in the GDI by using DirectX.
X doesn't work. I hate dragging a simple window and have a trail of tutti-fruity after it,
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Are you using GNOME by any chance? Because I never have that problem in KDE. In fact, KDE behaves better than WinXP in this respect, because I do see expose lag in Windows sometimes. I'm running 3.1.4 on a P4 2GHz with NVIDIA drivers.
or waiting 5 seconds for a menu to popup.
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I've never had to wait 5 seconds for a menu to pop up. If you're seeing that, there is something wrong with your configuraton. Anyway, X has nothing to do with how long it takes a menu to pop up. X is just the drawing layer. As a drawing layer, it is quite fast. But even if it was slow, it still wouldn't take long to draw a menu, which is basically just a color fill and some bit-blits. If your menus are drawing slowly, it's because your application is taking its sweet time responding to input events. GNOME has problems with this. It won't load icons until the first time they are actually used. That means when you open a menu for the first time in a given app, you can see each icon being drawn as they are loaded one at a time from disk! Again, this is a problem with the app, not X.
Here's the part where you blame the window manager, or the graphics library, or the desktop environment.
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Well, X *is* the graphics library, and it's fast, which is all you can really ask of a graphics library. So it *is* the fault of the window manager or DE. On my machine, KDE is about as fast as WinXP (except for some apps that haven't been well optimized for display performance, like Konqueror), while GNOME, Mozilla, and OpenOffice are dog-slow. If they both are using the same X, why does KDE run fast while the others don't? Start up Qt designer and abuse the UI. Try resizing with the resize bump in the corner. Try moving windows over it. Qt Designer has a complex UI with lots of widgets. But it performs just as fast as the best Windows apps. That's why X can't be the problem! Maybe its X's fault for not making it easier to write fast apps, but that's different from saying that X is slow.
Hold on while we hack on yet another "extension,"
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Let me guess. You're not a programmer, right? An extension is not a "hack." An extension is a way of extending a codebase to support a feature that was not concieved when it was originally written. An extension is a clean way to extend a codebase's functionality while preserving compatibility. A hack is entirely different.
and then meanwhile in a Microsoft discussion complain that you can't hack on things that weren't in the core design of Windows.
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Because Windows wasn't designed to be extendible. X was designed from the beginning to be extendible. Thus, new features were added on cleanly. Windows wasn't, and thus new features were sometimes hacks.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I don't really see X being that out of date. It doesn't support transparency and shadows, but aren't those things just eye candy? If it was 2005, and Longhorn had fully OpenGL-accelerated drawing with incredibly rich graphics in apps, and X was still where it is now, then yes, it would be behind. But fortunately, it looks like we'll have Longhorn's features sometime late in 2004, way before Longhorn even comes out :)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
... and quickly drop that pesky cross-platform portability it enjoys right now, at least until someone ports the Linux framebuffer device to non-Linux systems.
how to invest, a novice's guide
I love how people always compare things to Windows, which is the most backwards, un-advanced OS ever.
If you want to compare GUIs, compare with Mac OS X. OpenGL-accelerated drawing? Check. Incredibly rich graphics in apps? Check. No need to wait until 2006. And of course, by definition, right now X is still where it is now.
If Linux always strove to play catch-up with Windows, it would be horrible. Fortunately, it doesn't do that, except in the area of the GUI. It's no surprise, then, that Linux's GUI isn't very good.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I don't understand why people want to ditch X-Windows. The X-Windows system is a fine window system. It's not slow, it's extendable, it's networkable, and it runs in every Unix system/clone.
The problem lies with the layers above xlib: the toolkits. Actually, not the toolkits themselves, but how they are used. For example, the Linux GUIs suffer from bad fonts and bad font sizes, bad placement of text, bad placement of buttons, too much info on the screen, improper colors, and usability issues like cut-copy-paste etc.
To those that they request a new window system based on accelerated 3d graphics, I have to say this: it does not fit with the Unix mentality. Unix can run in minimal hardware. I can run TWM on a 486 and the machine will just fly. But if a new window system comes along that is based on new 3d accelerators, lots of old systems will be left out...and not forget other unix systems that might not have 3d acceleration at all. And the truly impressive effects that Quartz can achieve are just eye-candy...most professionals will turn them off anyway.
The only thing OS X has, technically, is the machinery necessary to support transparency and window shadows.
It does *not* have OpenGL-accelerated drawing, and the very rich applications that it enables.
I'm sick of debunking Quartz "Extreme". OS X just uses OpenGL to accelerate compositing. Go read Apple's SIGGRAPH presentation on Quartz "Extreme" (page 18, as I remember) to see that the CPU actually draws the Quartz 2D graphics.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...