Re: Discussing issues

On Mon, 14 Apr 2003 16:19:36 -0400, Havoc Pennington <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 14, 2003 at 08:25:16PM +0100, Alan Hourihane wrote:
>> I really don't think your going to get a clear answer to this question.
>>
>> Open Source exists for the fact that people can't agree on how to do
>> things. KDE vs Gnome, Unix vs Windows, and so on. Technologies compete.
>> It's the way of life.
>
> I have no doubt someone will always disagree with the answer.  That
> doesn't bother me. What I'm interested in is what most of the key
> developers from X, GTK+, Qt, major vendors, etc. can agree on.
>
> In other words, sure there won't ever be a 100% answer, but I predict
> there will be a 90% de facto answer, and moreover my view is that
> there *should* be such a 90% answer. The reason there should be is one
> of platform vs.  applications, or choice vs. fragmentation.  (see
> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=104725441423600&w=2)
>
> GTK+ and Qt, GNOME and KDE are very concerned to use the same X and
> have a standard place to put X enhancements; that alone is enough to
> get the 90%, even if OS vendors, Mozilla, OpenOffice, and others
> weren't concerned about it.
>
> There will also be some set of X APIs that lands in the LSB, and some
> set that is shipped across the major operating systems.
>
> One of my primary concerns in fact is to drive many platform aspects
> of GNOME/KDE/Mozilla/OpenOffice/whatever down into X. That's why I
> want to see a single X project, so it can include things like 
> fontconfig/STSF, or freedesktop.org.
>
> If Keith forks, you will get a "battle" scenario for a while, sure.
> But eventually, the "outside world" will pick one of the X
> implementation projects. The direction of X will effectively be
> whatever that X implementation project does. The other X projects will
> either have to copy the main one and sync to its APIs, or limit
> themselves to being a nice platform for twm or embedded or some other
> niche.
>
> However, if we get agreement among what's really a pretty small group
> of people (most of them on this list), we could avoid the hassle and
> delay and just design a solution up front. In addition to avoiding the
> XFree86 fork, we could take the opportunity to merge with X.org.
>
> I find it hard to believe that with all the smart people on this list,
> we can't solve what is essentially a simple problem - there are even
> many well-demonstrated case studies and proven approaches available
> for copying.

And why are you assuming it will be KeithX's?  I think in such a battle 
XFree86 will win.  We've won before, we'll do it again.  I don't believe
Keith's X will win unless of course Linux wants to lose entirely.





-- 
I said to the almond tree, "Sister, speak to me of God.", and the almond 
tree blossomed. -- Nikos Kazantzakis

Easter is April 27th.