[KLUG Members] XFree86

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>Did anyone read the Slashdot article:

I did, and several related articles and mail threads (including Keith's rebuttal).

My conclusion - somebody should slap Mr. Packard and tell him to get with the
program.  This is just like what happened with Mr. Kennsington and the Samba
Team,  and look how far Samba-TNG has gone - no where.

>http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/03/03/20/1215243.shtml
>     It is with regret that the XFree86 BOD announces that Keith Packard
>     has been removed from the XFree86 Core Team for conduct that is not
>     in the interests of the XFree86 Project. Specifically he has been
>     privately seeking out support for a fork of XFree86 that he would
>     lead, and has been privately working to form a closed committee of
>     invited "vested interests" to address the concerns he has with
>     XFree86. Unfortunately he has been consistently unwilling to discuss
>     his concerns with his fellow Core Team members or with the XFree86
>     BOD. This renders his continued membership of the XFree86 Core Team
>     unviable.
>XFree86.org has a *BSD-like structure: a team called core controls CVS
>access; however, unlike the *BSDs, this core == CVS committers. This is
>*SIXTEEN* people:

A bit untrue,  they do accept contributions and code from other people and
groups, including video card companies - but that core does the actuall merging.
 I've submitted stuff to Horde, Samba, and GNOME-db but I don't have CVS access.

>http://xfree86.org/coreteam.html
>KDE, Gnome and FreeBSD each have dozens or *hundreds* of committers, as
>a comparison. Even ATI can't commit Radeon 9500 driver patches to
>XFree86 without core's permission!

Thank the PTBs that ATI can't commit code.  Xfree isn't something you just want
people mucking about in, or using for their own agendas.  It is too critical and
crosses too many platforms for your average yahoo-pc-jockey to be hacking on.

The comparison to GNOME and KDE is spurious.  XFree does *1* thing, provide a
display architecture.  GNOME and KDE both are wide projects: API, data models,
UI, various toolkits, component architectures, RPC paradigms, etc...  And any
schmuck with a copy of GCC can whip up a handy Bonobo component - verses writing
a video driver?

>Word has it that Keith Packard does *not* wish to fork XFree86, as core
>accused him of doing. But he does seem to have talked to some groups
>with a vital interest in X on free *nix (KDE, Gnome, GGI, SDL, and the

He did this without consulting his fellow team members, they had no idea what he
was doing - that is unacceptable.

>Linux distributions, I *imagine*) about creating an XFree86 adjunct to
>speed up the coding. Alan Cox has weighed in on Packard's side:
>http://xfree86.org/pipermail/forum/2003-March/thread.html

He agreed with some of Keith's concerns, and they may be legitimate.  I think it
is a little strong to say he took Keith's side.

>I expect improvements in the XFree86 world will speed up. 


Me too.  "A little revolution now and then is a good thing."  Even if the
revolutionary is wrong.

>Fascinating.

Humans always are.  You never know what crazy thing their going to do next.



Adam Tauno Williams
Network & Systems Administrator
Morrison Industries
Grand Rapids, Mi. USA