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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?"
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.
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
Because, basically, every software project needs to evolve or it will die. And there is a lot of room for improvement in X11 ! Apple has developed a very nice system (Quartz) and even Microsoft is constructing a very modular and IMO quite interesting Avalon system. There are some good techniques in there that will benefit the entire X11 community.
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.
Wasn't this what Keith Packard et.al wanted?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Yes, and when it says, "the core team was no longer representative of the active, experienced and skilled XFree86 developers," it actually sounds like they might be opening up the project a little more, rather than disbanding it. Given some of the negative comments I've heard in the past about the rigidity and bureaucracy of core team, this could well be a very good thing for XFree86 overall.
If you ask me, xfree86 doesn't need much "inovation". It works great the way it is! Of course, that shouldn't stop other people from taking the xfree code and do radically new stuff with it. If someone manages to come up with something that is significantly better than xfree I'll be more than happy to switch.
signatures are for fools with hands
Given that statement, why would you ask them to describe the future of XFree86, which is something over which they explicitly announced that they don't have control?
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear... will keep the local systems in line.
There is nothing in it about the future of X86, which would be mine and many others big concern.
Don't worry - Intel, AMD, etc have far too much money invested in x86 to kill it off anytime soon
It's official. Most of you are morons.
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"?
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...