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Open Group spawns X.Org
Branden Robinson writes "The Open Group has created a new sub-organization, X.Org, to hold stewardship of the X Window System. X.Org will be a membership organization similar to the old I2O group, with open membership but voting restricted to paying members, and rules for expulsion of members. Check out their site and this NewsAlert story for more. "
These people inflicted Motif and CDE on us. I was hoping they'd keep that silly licensing issue the way it was so that the world would realize just how much they sucked and contribute to XF86 instead.
Maybe the world just just realize how much they suck and contribute to XF86 instead.
I see, instead of using an open development model X-Windows is run by a bunch of companies who all have their hands in Microsoft's pockets (for the most part that is).
:) PC's running Linux or *BSD* aren't the only machines on the planet running X.
:)
While Linux and alike champion open source software, I feel it is equally important to work in an open environment instead of this silly closed development model X-Windows has taken.
Sure, you can modify window managers which sit ontop of X, or toolkits which applications use... but just try adding new features to X itself and see how well it goes or modifying existing features in X (that would break standards that is).
And don't give me that, "you can add it to xfree86" crap
Of course, I'm slightly biased on this topic
--
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
In light of the Open Source/Free Software movement, maybe there should be a way for people who contribute source code (rather than paying money) to be voting members. This way non-profit entities like the XFree86 group can get involved without worrying about coming up with the funds.
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
Interesting to note is that all the engineers from The X Consortium have now been gone for almost a year, as TOG gets around to "doing something" with X.
My last month at TOG was working on the X Project Team. It gives me an interesting point of view, as AFAIR the new license was being driven by the corporate sponsors of the XPT (most of those companies you mention above), because they felt they were paying the development costs so that other companies (i.e. Linux distributors like RedHat) could "ride for free".
Too bad TOG melted down and disvolved the last part of OSF when they did, as a source release of Motif was in the works at the time!
Sheesh. Anyone thinking TOG is getting special treatment WRT x.org is just dating themselves as "Internet newbies". x.org belonged to the X Consortium right from when it spun out from MIT. That's nearly 10 years by now. The 1997 date reported by whois is only the time the record was created as belonging to TOG.
And, long before "The Slashdot Effect", the Internet trembled at whims of "The X Effect", which took place whenever a new release of X was made. It generally caused no end of routing havoc as links were saturated with X tar balls for days on end.
I've been only slightly involved with this.
Comments below are my personal opinion, and
are do not reflect either Compaq's or X.org's
position.
Several things of note:
1) the traditional UNIX vendors have not been
happy with The Open Group's stewardship of X;
this is mostly extricating X from TOG's grasp.
Shall we say that the copyright change TOG did last year upset them as much as anyone in the Linux community?
2) Current members are listed at: http://www.x.org/current_members.htm.
It includes: Compaq, HP, Hummingbird, IBM, SGI,
Sun, Astek, Attachmate, Barko, Jupiter Systems,
MetroLink, MITre, Peritek, Sequent, Shiman, Siemens, Starnet, WRQ, Xi Graphics.
3) I think the X Consortium registered X.org
before there were any restrictions on name length.
If you are interested in the future of X and
attending Linux Expo, you may want to attend the
BOF Thursday evening...
- Jim Gettys