Re: Discussing issues

On Tue, Apr 15, 2003 at 04:52:48PM -0700, Kendall Bennett wrote:
>Mark Vojkovich <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 15 Apr 2003, Havoc Pennington wrote:
>> > A key
>> > XFree86-specific metric for me is whether it's driving much-needed new
>> > library APIs and extensions in a convincing fashion, as that's my pet
>> > agenda. And so on, you can think of lots of stuff, much of it has been
>> > brought up. XFree86 is good on some metrics and bad on others.
>> 
>>    While I hope you don't mean it as such, this does sound like
>> you expecting XFree86 to take up your agenda and then you being
>> disappointed that it didn't happen.
>
>My take on this is *not* that Havoc is expecting that the Open Source 
>community can drive XFree86's developers and force them to implement 
>'much-needed new library API's and extensions', but rather not standing 
>in the way of allowing them to *happen*.

It's absurd to suggest that somone can stop someone else from doing
exactly that.  If you want to implement a much-needed new library
API and extension, go implement it.  For some reason, that's not
enough, because there are those that feel a formalised structure
is needed to give credibility to their work.

Had XFree86 waited for that kind of endorsement we would not be
here today.  The X Consortium, the undisputed owner of "X" at the
time, not only did not endorse us, it actively discouraged us.

Instead of being deterred by this, it strengthened our resolve.
We succeeded where they failed not because we were 'free' (their
implmentation was too), but because they were too short-sighted
and/or self-interested to look beyond what were the dominant
workstation platforms of the day.

The idea that Havoc is suggesting regarding "blessed" APIs seems
to me to be intended discourage others from deviating from the "one
true path."  While I can understand how some may find that idea
alluring in the name of a "unified Linux Desktop" vs Microsoft, I
think it will stifle innovation in the longer term because you are
still playing by their rules and not thinking 'out of the box'.

The XFree86 vs X Consortium example shows this clearly.

David
-- 
David Dawes
Founder/committer/developer                     The XFree86 Project
www.XFree86.org/~dawes