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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!
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)
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.
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.
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.
signatures are for fools with hands
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"
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
How will XFree maintain control without the bureaucracy?
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.
Jesus Fucking Christ. How many times are people going to trot this shit out?
/flame on
/flame off
You haven't been using Linux or X very long, have you? Or if you have, how have you failed to notice how many times someone says "X is slow/boated/sux for 3d/etc"? If you did, did you ever follow the discussion after that point, or did you just say, "Yep, I agree with them, I can stop reading now"?
Because if you had, how did you miss the amazingly lucid explanations as to just why X does not suck; just how incredibly extensible it is; or how it does not suck at 3d, but that the real problem lies in the card manufacturers who won't release the necessary specs to allow open driver development? No, really. The fundamental problem with 3D driver development is that the card manufacturers have a limited pool of developers who can only acquire so much knowledge/expertise, and can only spend so much time developing drivers for each platform. How much better would things be if they would allow more experienced X devs to look at their code and suggest or write some improvements? We know the answer to this question; if you don't, what are you doing using Free Software?
X works. X works well. X, properly equipped with the right drivers, even does 3d well. If you can't configure it yourself (no shame there; I was scared as hell the first time *I* did it), there's all these nice distros from RedHat (oops, Fedora), SuSE, Mandrake, even Debian that have tools to do it for you.
Allright, I'm done. Back to browsing at +3...
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...
This can be worked around. You move to a new core, and you toss out all the backwards compatibility crap. THEN, you add a backwards compatibility layer or module for the code that still needs it. Surely it would be easier for X than it was for, say, Apple, when they made apps designed for System 6 on an m68k processor successfully run under System 7 on a PowerPC processor. Thus you can get your brand new spiffy clean core with all the latest features while retaining legacy support. You just need to lose the idea that legacy support needs to be maintained at the core...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
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 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!