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XOrg Foundation Opens Membership and Elections

Posted by Hemos on from the come-join-up dept.

XOrg Foundation writes "To active developers and users of the X Window System:You are invited to join and help shape the direction of the new X.Org Foundation. Membership in the X.Org Foundation is now open and free.Applications for membership are sought from all contributors to the X and Desktop communities." Read more below for the rest of the information from the foundation.

The Interim Board of directors has established that examples of acceptable
contributions that will qualify you for membership in the Foundation include
coding, bug-fixing, testing, design, documentation, translation,
administration or maintenance of project-wide resources, speaking at
conferences, and supporting bugzilla or release management.

Should you wish to apply for free membership in the X.Org Foundation, then
please visit:

http://www.x.org/XOrg_Foundation_Membership.html

All Members are eligible for election to the Board of Directors and the
Architecture Group of the XOrg Foundation. The XOrg Foundation is now
seeking nominations for candidates for election to these groups.

Nominations for each election are open until 23.59 PDT on Friday 30th April
2004 for those Members of the X.Org Foundation who wish to stand for
election. You may nominate yourself for election. You may not nominate any
other member.

There will be 8 people elected to each of the Board of Directors and the
Architecture Group. In this first year of the X.Org Foundation, the four
candidates polling the most votes in each election will be granted a two
year term of office (until June 2006), and the next four candidates will
receive 1 year term of office (until June 2005). In subsequent years, four
seats of each group will be re-elected in the annual elections.

It is permissible for a candidate to stand for election for both the Board
of Directors and the Architecture Group.

The responsibilities of an elected person are detailed in the current
Bylaws of the X.Org Foundation, which can be found at:

http://www.x.org/XOrg_ByLaws_17Sep03.pdf

In addition, an elected person will be required to attend the annual
meeting of the X.Org Foundation, which will be held a location determined
in advance by the Board of Directors.

Should you wish to enter your candidacy for these elections, then please
prepare a personal statement of up to 200 words that can be provided to
prospective voters. This statement, and the statement of contribution to
the X.Org Foundation (which you completed when applying for membership)
will be made available to all voters to help them make their voting
decisions.

Once you have completed your personal statement, then you may visit:

http://www.x.org/member/XOrg_Foundation_Election_N omination.tpl

to enter your candidacy for the X.Org Foundation elections.

We look forward to your membership and candidacy submissions,

The Interim Board
X.Org Foundation."

12 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Rant time!! by noselasd · · Score: 4, Informative

    >2: Why does the ENTIRE app need to redraw itself (using huge amounts of
    >network bandwidth) every time I obscure it with a window or hop to
    >another virtual desktop??? The damned thing is already wasting traffic
    >updating when I'm not even lookin g at it, why does it need to redraw
    >AGAIN when I view the window again???? Now onto my final gripe for
    >right now.
    Toolkit problem. Don't blame that on X.

    >Gripe 3: If X is such a truly network independent application why the
    >hell can't I simply redirect the output of an already running process
    >to any X-term???
    Cause ther's a lot of state residing on the X server about every
    application/Xwindow. And there is no current way of transferring
    that state to another X server.

  2. Re:I hope they solve by c4Ff3In3+4ddiC+ · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well for one, you don't have to edit the config file if you are only rebuilding the nvidia kernel modules.

    Second, there are scripts floating around that will automatically rebuild the nvidia kernel module for your current kernel if it fails to load. I have been using such a script in Gentoo for a few months now. Works fine and I never have to do anything after installing a new kernel.

    --
    *twitch*
  3. Re:GPL? by Weird+O'Puns · · Score: 5, Informative

    Xorg isn't licensed GPL but with the old XFree license(v.1.0) that is GPL compatible. The big discussion was because the latest XFree license(v.1.1) holds a clause that makes it incompatible with GPL, which then might produce massive problems with anything linked to it. This isn't yet a problem as the XFree's xlib is still using the old license, but people fear it might be in the future.

  4. Re:Why? by KingOfBLASH · · Score: 1, Informative

    There were some articles about this on /.. Basically, the guy in charge of the XFree86 project decided to change the license terms from GPL to something which was very inconvinient for most distros. Up until this point, X.org was just a discussion group of "What should we do with XFree86"? Because XFree86 was now non free, they forked the project when it was last under the GPL, and now are looking for members to develop the newest incarnation of the X window system.

  5. This is informative? by Svartalf · · Score: 5, Informative

    Uh, XFree86 has never been GPLed or LGPLed. It's under an MIT/X11 license variant since it's inception- I know, I had to license code modifications to the Utah-GLX source base under that license. What transpired was that the guy in charge of the XFree86 project changed the license to more of a BSD-ish license that requires advertising, etc. This made the newly licensed version incompatible on a licensing level with any GPLed OS- you can use it, you just can't distribute the new version of XFree86 with a Linux distribution without the prospects of possible legal hassles, etc.

    --
    I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
    1. Re:This is informative? by Arker · · Score: 3, Informative

      What transpired was that the guy in charge of the XFree86 project changed the license to more of a BSD-ish license that requires advertising, etc.

      Yes, they recently changed to something resembling the old BSD license, including an advertising clause, which makes it not compatible with the GPL. That's the licensing tiff. However this came after the original split between the groups, where some people walked away from the Xfree86 project because of other issues - problems getting changes commited, folks that hadn't developed in years still having developer status while folks that were major current contributors couldn't get it, and had to go through a huge rigamarole to get bug fixes posted and the like. So it was really the combination of the two different issues that brought the current situation about - the first group that split were fortuitously positioned to pick things up when the license change drove the second group to leave and the Linux Distro-makers decided they didn't want anything to do with the new Xfree86.

      This made the newly licensed version incompatible on a licensing level with any GPLed OS- you can use it, you just can't distribute the new version of XFree86 with a Linux distribution without the prospects of possible legal hassles, etc.

      This isn't actually true. You can distribute non-free software on the same disk with free, that's not the problem at all.

      The problem is that you can't link the code. If your GPL program needs to link against some of the new Xfree code, then you have a legal problem because of the licenses being incompatible. In most cases that's probably not necessary, but in the cases where it is it's a huge problem, and while shipping the new Xfree86 in a distro would not necessarily be a legal problem (particularly since the new license affects only the new code,) it would still be opening the door to huge problems later on, and that's why no one wants to touch the thing. Hopefully the fact that this license change has just dropped Xfree86 from being the defacto standard X11 implementation to being a historical footnote overnight will act as a warning to anyone else that might be considering the same course of action.

      The Xfree86 project still seems to be in denial about this, btw, as a quick browse of their website will show, but the fact remains - no one is using their new version, no one will touch it with a ten foot pole, and their developers are hemmoraging like crazy.

      --
      =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
      Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
  6. Re:Rant time!! by Hornsby · · Score: 4, Informative

    Gripe 3: If X is such a truly network independent application why the hell can't I simply redirect the output of an already running process to any X-term?

    You can easily do this if you use screen. I do it all the time.

    http://www.guckes.net/screen/

    Use it like this:

    user@host:~$ screen -S longcompile
    user@host:~$ make


    Now press ctrl-a then d to detach.

    Close all your terms and go home.
    Now ssh back into the machine and type screen -R longcompile to reconnect to your compile session. You can detach and reattach as often as you like. It also has a lot more features, but I'll let you RTM for those.

    --
    A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.
  7. Re:Rant time!! by jd · · Score: 2, Informative
    These are toolkit problems. The protocol looks fine, from these perspectives.


    Personally, I think there is a case for allowing vector graphics in X - it would make fonts easier to define, for example. Low-level voxel support would be nice, too, for when people play with 3D.


    There's also a case for modifying the X font server to support metafonts.


    The sample implementation needs a few speedups, too - it's OK but could include accelerated cases. I've also had lots of problems running binaries compiled from their sources. Too many quirks.


    Aside from these minor irritants, X as it stands is a very good system.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  8. Re:More infighting? by Open+$ource+Advocate · · Score: 2, Informative

    Those 2 thing go together. "Free" as in freedom (as in GPL) gets you no-strings.

    Actually, the GPL is not no-strings. No strings would be public domain. GPL is more like 1 string -- if you release it, provide source. Depending on your philosophy and whether or not you agree with the GNU Manifesto, that's either a whisper-thin thread or a big thick rope that weighs you down.

    --
    Have you read the GNU Manifesto lately?
  9. Re:Forks by kundor · · Score: 3, Informative
    the exact same nvidia and ati drivers work perfectly on both Xfree86 and X.org.

    Please stop your fud.

  10. Re:Why? by fooishbar · · Score: 2, Informative

    The X.Org Foundation is not run by keithp; he is not even on the interim board. The reformation of X.Org is a process which has been going for quite some time now.

    Sure, we're all interested in openness and transparency, which is why we're working so hard to see it all happen. But this isn't about a single person, or gripes about a single project; it's about achieving the end goal of X's world domination (and self-improvement) as best we can. :) d, X hanger-on

    --
    -- x hacker, iterant idiot (with apologies to michael meeks)
  11. Re:Rant time!! by Burpmaster · · Score: 2, Informative

    Gripe 2: Why does the ENTIRE app need to redraw itself (using huge amounts of network bandwidth) every time I obscure it with a window or hop to another virtual desktop???

    You want a backing store for the windows. Try using the +bs option to the X server, as in

    startx -- +bs