Re: fork()

Eric Sandall wrote:

> Instead of forking, why not just pick up the y-windows project as it
> is and continue it with the community? This way you get to keep the
> name, website, etc. Of course you'll want to contact Mark (and
> possibly Andrew) about this and try to get their permission, but I see
> you've already done that and gotten no response. In that case, I'd try
> to keep this community going with this name instead of forking. If
> Mark (the legal owner of y-windows, AFAIK) comes by and says, "Hey, I
> own this name and I don't want you using it." then we can just grab
> our code we've done and rename the project.

<mode style=blunt>

No-one, despite all the noises about using this SCM or that SCM, 
forking, setting up wikis or any of the other suggested contributions 
has actually written and published any patches.

Indeed, there's no point in asking for permission to take over ownership 
of any of the existing project management gadgets -- all of the 
important components (explanatory website, mailing list, SCM) are 
already in place and basically run themselves.  They're not the 
bottleneck; they will scale far beyond their current load.

The rate-limiting factor is that no-one's writing code.  And unless that 
changes, playing about with project management widgets -- or worse, 
trying to pursuade everyone to downgrade to an inferior SCM because you 
find Arch too hard to use -- will not help the project progress.

[ Hint: if you can't drive a relatively simple SCM tool like Arch, then 
what makes you think you can help design and build a complex desktop 
windowing system? ]

By all means, grab a copy of the code (it's Free - see COPYING) and set 
up all the extra mailing lists, SCM systems and wikis that you like. 
You don't even need anyone's permission.  But unless you're going to 
actually start hacking on the code and produce genuinely *interesting* 
results no-one's going to pay you any attention.

Cheers,
David
-- 
David McBride <[email protected]>