Re: Suggestion for XFree86

On Mar 20, Frank LaMonica wrote:
 > The ONLY thing XFree86 needs to do to correct this problem is to establish a
 > mechanism where any interested person may join XFree86 and be given an equal
 > vote to elect a slate of candidates for a governing board of directors whose
 > tenure is fixed to some reasonable duration.

This seems like a very reasonable proposal. The notion of a general
membership that elects a governing board is obviously typical of many
successful organizations. As suggested in a previous thread, a
mechanism would also need to be instrumented for determining who
qualifies as a general member of XFree86.

And of course, all of these mechanisms should be carefully specified
in documents (constitution, by-laws, whatever) that are available to
be examined by potential members of the organization. Certainly, other
comparably large open source software development groups must have

Speaking of which, what are the current policies for XFree86? How is
membership of the BOD determined? the core team? general project
membership? I can't find any information about this on the xfree86.org
web pages.

I've seen many requests on the xfree86.org mailing lists rejected with
phrases such as "that's a good idea, but it takes work, and all of the
current developers are busy working on other things". For such cases,
it seems the only solution is to acquire more developers for the
project. But in my experience, the barriers to entry for xfree86
membership are too great, and the project seems to discourage new
developers from joining.

The largest barrier seems to me that membership rights and
responsibilities are not defined, (at least not publicly), nor is
the process for obtaining membership.

-Carl

PS. Here's a (somewhat rambling) description of some of the specific
barriers of entry to XFree86 that I've seen, demonstrated by personal
experience:

1) The main xfree86.org web page links to no information about joining
   the project, (that I can find anyway).

2) There is a web-page (http://www.xfree86.org/developer.html), that
   says,

	How to Become an XFree86 Developer

	Get and build the latest XFree86 code from the CVS repository,
	and subscribe to the XFree86 developer list (see above).

   In my experience, I've done these since about August 2001, but
   clearly that's not enough to get on the project.

3) From some mailing list traffic, I've seen that having some code
   accepted is a prerequisite to membership.

   OK, I've got about 1000 lines of code in the server, (since about
   June 2002) implementing the trapezoid geometric primitive for the
   RENDER extension.

   I only got that code committed because I was lucky enough to have
   volunteered to write some code needed by a member of the core team,
   (Keith Packard) who committed it for me. Obviously, I can't use
   that route to maintain my code anymore.

   So what can I do to continue to maintain the code I wrote? Send
   patches and pray? I've seen enough examples of this process failing
   that I'm not even willing to try it (see above about how current
   developers are all too busy). It's an inherently unscalable process
   if the group of developers cannot grow.

So, can I become a member of XFree86? Have I fulfilled all the
prerequisites for membership? (I honestly don't know). What would I do
next to request membership? (again, I honestly don't know what the
process is supposed to be -- I haven't found any explanation).

And finally, do I want to join XFree86? I don't know. I'd have to be
able to find out what rights and responsibilities come with membership
before I ask to join.

-Carl

-- 
Carl Worth                                        
USC Information Sciences Institute                      [email protected]