Re: Discussing issues

On Mon, Apr 14, 2003 at 07:11:02PM -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 14, 2003 at 11:27:12PM +0100, Alan Hourihane wrote: 
> > In your example, what's stopping people developing for STSF or fontconfig ?
> > 
> > In my eyes, nothing. I don't understand why your asking for some stake
> > in the ground to say this is the one we're backing. The backing of a
> > piece of code comes from it's developers of that code. Sun is obviously
> > heading down the STSF route whereas others are using fontconfig. One will
> > win on it's merits of the people using the code. Heck, STSF doesn't even
> > exist in XFree86's tree, yet people are still using it. Just because it
> > doesn't exist in XFree86's CVS doesn't mean that it's right or the
> > best implementation.
> 
> I'll go through my line of thinking in more detail to try and see
> exactly where we're diverging.
> 
> One thing I'm interested in is pulling together a set of components
> and saying "this is the base GUI platform for X11/UNIX." I'm also
> interested in growing the scope of that platform over time.
 
You can't define that. It's always going to be a moving target.

> Sure, some people will always develop stuff that doesn't end up in the
> platform, and use things that aren't in it. That's great, it means
> there's lots of interest and experimentation. I'm all for it.
 
Right.

> However, I think a significant group of people and organizations
> (including the major desktops and OS vendors) see the value and need
> for a shared platform, and are willing to sacrifice some of their
> other interests and compromise on the details to get there.
 
O.k.

> Creating a shared platform means not only including things, but also
> excluding/deprecating things. We can't have 6 font subsystems, that
> defeats the purpose - it would keep applications from adopting any of
> them.
 
You mention excluding/deprecating, but what about superceeding ?
You've already got bitmap/Speedo/Type1/FreeType etc font systems.
Applications are written with the tools that are best suited for those
who are writing the application - they adopt what fits, not what claims
to be a standard.

> Creating a shared platform also means shared implementation work, not
> just shared specification/decision-making work. As I said back in the
> X.org thread, I don't like the idea of standards isolated from
> implementation.
> 
> So if the goal is shared platform, and we're going to keep the
> spec/standards for our platform as rubber-stamp outgrowths of the
> implementation, the implication is that the implementation project has
> to own the definition of the platform.
> 
> That in turn implies that the implementation project has to make
> decisions such as the fontconfig/STSF decision, and has to have a
> mechanism for doing so.
> 
> Finally, a shared platform has to share some kind of releases or
> versioning, or even though the platform is synced up on any given day,
> vendors are all shipping a different snapshot and so real-world
> systems are not synced up.
> 
> If you walk through my line of thinking above, at what specific point
> do we disagree?
> 
> David's mail about distributions rolling their own releases implied to
> me that he does not want to own the component list or release schedule
> for this kind of platform. David, I could have interpreted your mail
> wrongly, please say so if I did.
> 
> Havoc
>  
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