XFree86 joins X.Org as Honorary Member

Virtex writes "According to a press release at X.Org, the XFree86 group has been made an honorary member of X.Org, which is an organization of the Open Group. This will allow them a seat at hearings and the ability to vote on the executive board. "

Comments

Somewhat flamey, but we do like BBQ in Texas...

[Christopher B. Brown]

But, if someone develops an alternative that exists on a wide range of platforms, enables the productivity that X enables, and runs something as nice as Enlightenment (not to mention WindowMaker/FVWM/etc.), and something as minimal as twm, then you might find me using it as well.

Indeed. There are a host of relatively-failed graphical systems:

• MGR, which had a dramatically anti-commercial license
• Sun NeWS, which was too proprietary when X was less so
• Smalltalk GUIs, that work iff you're using the same Smalltalk implementation
• NeXtStep/OPENSTEP, which are no longer deployable because Adobe is reluctant to license the necessary DPS layer (which would also cause problems with Sun NeWS)

Berlin, BeOS, NanoGUI, and such, all may be interesting options, but until they exist on a wide range of platforms, provide the flexibility of X, and actually have substantial bodies of code that will run on 'em, they can't realistically be considered as more than wishful alternatives.

The amazing thing...

[Enoch Root]

The amazing thing in this is that XFree86 has not been invited before. I think most geeks wouldn't even differentiate between XFree86 and X. It's like creating a group on Open Source OSes and not inviting Linux people.

At least people got the wake-up call. It just goes to show that establishments exist even within the Open Source community.

Re:The amazing thing...

[alexhmit01]

I disagree, maybe SOME Linux users don't make the distinction, but "geeks" will. We've read the white papers, the design specs, etc. We understand why X is so powerful. XFree86 does a tremendous job of creating a really solid Xserver, but it is NOT X. (I'm typing this from IE under NT, while my KDE desktop smiles at me from my session under Exceed).

Until recently, XFree86 was playing catchup, providing an implementation of X designed for people to play around with. However, with the other Unix vendors moving out of the workstation market and into the headless server market, XFree86 is the most compliant server out there.

For a while, XFree86's interests and The Open Group's interests were NOT compatible. They were trying to develop an interoperable system so that expensive software makers would have an easy time developing for multiple Unixes. However, even more importantly, was the attempt to share research costs. People bought Unix workstations for their power, not their Xserver, so it was in the company's interest to work together on the display portion.

Now, with Unix moving into the high end, and Linux gobbling up the low end, there is a desire for a strong, inexpensive X-server. Hummingbird probably isn't thrilled, although Exceed doesn't seem to be their major selling point, so perhaps they don't care. The Unix vendors are bringing XFree86 in because the need inexpensive workstations to manage the Unix machines. X's distributed nature makes a Linux machine an ideal platform. Additionally, after watching XFree86 on my friend's Solaris x86 machine, maybe the Unix vendors are planning to get out of the X-server market, letting XFree86 pick up that entire R&D tab.

Realize that XFree86 could have joined the group at any time, merely by ponying up the cash. Being given a free seat on a Industry board is pretty significant.

What makes this amazing, is that this is the same group that almost caused XFree86 to fork from the X standard, because they were going to charge beginning with R4... Perhaps they realized that XFree86 was the only group interested in pushing X further, as Unix was too high end for workstations. Linux, however, has a desktop fancy, so it needs a good GUI.

Alex

Progress reports

[Booker]

From XFree's website:

Short delay in releases

[December 1999]

The XFree86 Project has missed a few promised release dates in fall 1999, but we are very optimistic to be back on track for 3.3.6 and 3.9.17 to be released before the end of the year. Similarly, we expect XFree86-4.0 to be delayed by about two months and are aiming for a release in mid-Q1/2000.
----

X.org needs XFree

[crow]

I should be noted that The Open Group's X.org needs the help of XFree, not the other way around.

Remember back in early 1998 when they changed the licensing on X? The idea was to generate more revenue to fund The Open Group's X development efforts. Well, The Open Group dumped X development that summer (along with most of their other development efforts), and was nice enough to change back the licensing.

So now the only organization doing public development of X is XFree. Hence, anything that goes into XFree becomes the defacto standard. By making XFree an honorary member, it makes it easier to keep the defacto standard and the paper standard in sync. Since The Open Group only exists for standards and branding anymore, they desperately need to retain control.


DISCLAIMER: I am a former employee of The Open Group, but was not involved with X.

Re:Funny

[PiMan]

Hey now, don't discount this guy as a troll so fast. X, although it might be the best we have now, is horribly old and bloated. Did you know that the core code for most X distributions is the original reference implementation? Yep. No one has ever written a real X core. Plus, the 1984 standards really haven't been updated.

Now, look at XFree86. They're doing modular systems, fbcon servers, and native OpenGL acceleration - things that actually involve changing core code and bringing the standards up to date. While I don't support XFree86 pulling away from X entirely, they have been taking their own direction a lot, and that's a really Good Thing.

Also, some small hype: The Berlin Project is an attempt to redesign a new windowing system from the ground up, using CORBA and OpenGL. While it's far from complete, if you've got any coding skills and dislike X, donate some time there.

Also, please do drop the 86. XFree is a great cross-platform X distribution, not just for the Intel line anymore.

TOG vs Everyone

[Christopher B. Brown]

It's not clear that TOG and XFree86 are "getting along;" what is evident is that the X committee has decided that they need to "get along" with XFree86.

It is entirely possible the people at Sun, IBM, HP, Compaq, (and possibly others) decided that as they're supporting Linux from other perspectives, that the needed to tell TOG that it needs to as well.

Convincing signs of a TOG "change of heart" would include things like:

• Defining UNIX 1999 or UNIX 2000 in such a way that Linux systems could become branded as UNIX, rather than their current comments
• Releasing Motif/CDE in Open Source form.

Shameless Plug: People should help Sponsor XFree86. My local Linux Users Group, NTLUG, is in the process of soliciting that members help sponsor several free software project organizations, including XFree86.

Interesting architecture but YEARS away

[Christopher B. Brown]

The nice thing about Berlin is that they have sought to use some substantively new bits of infrastructure, like CORBA and OpenGL, whilst "stealing" ideas from the (essentially failed) next-generation GUI, Fresco. (Fresco probably should have been pegged as the X GUI rather than Motif, to peg its chronology...)

The problem is that Berlin utterly throws away compatibility with the huge bodies of works currently running using Motif, TK, GTK, Qt, Xt, and FLTK (to name the likely "top" GUI libraries used on X).

As a result of discarding compatibility, Berlin is pretty useless until ALL your favorite software is rewritten to use Berlin. Some emulation may be possible, but this is nontrivial, and it'll literally take years for this to be robust enough for production use.

Re:Is it just me?

[Roundeye]

Is it just me or does X seem big, slow, bloated, and old? It can't keep up with pretty environments like GNOME

What are you smoking? What do you think X is? What do you think GNOME is?

There are more regulations and standards than anyone cares to read.

"Man, there's too many regulations and standards to this Internet thing. Nobody wants to read that."... Again, what are you smoking? Noone has to read a single regulation or standard to use X, or even GNOME :-), but those standards are what makes it possible for me to launch a Netscape on a Solaris box behind a firewall in NY and have it appears on MI/X on a WindowsNT box in Tennessee. That's a simple example of what the standardization allows.

We need a new windowing protocol that addresses the need of the modern PC user

You've got one. It's called Windows. What's that you say? Windows is a shameless rip-off of the significant UI advances over the past 20 years? Oh, Windows is poorly written bloatware? I'm sorry. Maybe we should use a standardized system that has been refined over a decade and which allows extensible network-transparent sessions over multiple architectures. Hey, why not make an OpenSource version that's also compatible with the system that runs on Crays SGI's, Unix Mainframes, and PC's?

The continued development of X seems pointless to me - I think we need something new altogether.

Your continued ignorance seems pointless to me. However, regardless, why don't you scurry along and work on that dream of bringing a real GUI to the masses. Go sign up for any of a number of projects (browse through freshmeat and sourceforge) in this area. Heck, if you're uber-1337 maybe you can even get PAID for your efforts by working for a company developing such projects.

Having used X over the past decade on everything from Heavy Iron visualization systems (with graphics hardware the likes of which YOU CAN'T GET for a PC), to mainframes, to Unix workstations, to Linux/*BSD boxen, to win16/32 machines, to wierd-ass closed network devices... I'd say you'd be hard pressed to find a viable alternative to X anytime in the next 5 years. The flexibility, scalability, portability, and customizability (X+GNOME+Enlightenment, for instance is slicker than eel snot) of X beats the pants of the competitors.

But, if someone develops an alternative that exists on a wide range of platforms, enables the productivity that X enables, and runs something as nice as Enlightenment (not to mention WindowMaker/FVWM/etc.), and something as minimal as twm, then you might find me using it as well.

So get your ass to work if you're so dissatisfied.