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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.
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.
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.
(NOT framebuffer because fb doesn't work well with some hardware)
Purely out of interest, what kind of hardware does the framebuffer not work well on?
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"
How will XFree maintain control without the bureaucracy?
"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
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.
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...