Another teleconference partial edited transcript

>>> The meetings are closed and minutes are edited. Haven't we had enough of 
>>> that? 
>>
>>Point taken.  I'll just add that even edited minutes are informative. 
>>I'd be very interested in reading the XFree86 BOD and core team 
>>discussions...even edited ones.
>
>The difference is that this group of vested interests uses "openness"
>as a large part of their claim to credibility.  In my experience,
>the XFree86 BOD and core team does not and never has.  If the vested
>interests want to retain any of that credibility, they need to stop
>making excuses about the way they're operating, and be measured
>against their *own* metrics.  There are lots of ways they could do
>that, but they are choosing a method that can easily be manipulated
>to suit their vested interests.  It's a facade of transparency,
>not real transparency.

'They' are a group of people who are either active developers of the X codebase or people with stature in the open source software world.  They are sick of waiting for the BOD of XFree86 to do something about the obvious problems that riddle XFree as an organisation and as a project.

This open forum is no way to make progress.  Most of what is being said here is, in the context of the BOD, simply voicing nothing that's not already known.  It's not achieving anything other than proving the BOD is as inflexible as feared and as implied by the fact that the BOD operates in such a closed manner.

Back to the point; for progress to be made decisions have to be made and be made quickly.  The best way to do that is to hammer out what each interested party feels is important.  "But it's by private invite only" is a ridiculous argument; you know as well as any other sensible person that has shown sufficient interest in XFree86's future direction as it is now or as a fork.  Anybody worth inviting was invited and to have made it completely open to the world would have been asking for trouble; read the comments to the  average slashdot story or even some of the more extreme/ignorant comments in this forum.

You can't argue that a conference call is not an effective medium.  There's no real chance of streaming it live nor giving out a recording (or are you offering to host those few hundred megs?) and an edited transcript cuts out the crap that your passive participants (eg me) don't want to know about.  It's to the point.  Which is the BOD's problem; it misses the point.

Then there's your ludicrous insinuations that somebody might 'manipulate' the transcript (the way you label Keith makes you appear paranoid) which are unrealistic at best.  The transcript goes to all active participants who approve it in one way or another.

Once things settle, I'm sure they will drop back to a more stereotyically open communication mechanism - ie mail lists - and it will only be then that you could judge the openness of their efforts.

>Speaking for myself.
>
>David

It shows that you're speaking for yourself.  Your replies are full of obvious personal issues to do with the potential usurping of your position as leader of the premier windowing protocol implementation for the Unice.  But how can an inactive developer lead an organisation?  If you were leading a democracy or a business, you'd have been left behind long ago for your disinterest.

Be productive, be constructive, or be anonymous.  That's the way open source software works.  And if you object, it's your fault for (pseudo) GPL'ing it in the first place.

I and many others salute you for your efforts and contributions to the open source free software world.  But, for the love of [your chosen divinity], stop being so bitter.  It's a complete disenchantment with the BOD of Xfree86 that is driving, what is increasingly obvious as the only answer, a fork of XFree.
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