Re: For all the distros now onboard

georgina o. economou wrote:
> PS I got a lot of new distros this week and quite honestly have been
> a bit overwhelmed so I am not announcing them all together as I have
> previously done but separately as I get to them during the week.

>I'm a little confused. Mr. Dawes is quoted as saying:

>"I think this provides a good opportunity for XFree86 to cut
>out the middle-man, and go back to a stronger emphasis on
>providing our software directly to the end user as we did in
>the early days."

>(in the theinquirer.net interview article)

>If Xfree86's maintainers view the whole license issue as a great 
>opportunity to cut out the middleman, then why is there a big push to 
>"sign on" more middlemen?

>What exactly is the view of the maintainers on this issue?

Great that you asked Kurt as I am sure that many are confused by Dave's comments and our http://www.xfree86.org/distro-support.html page (both of which we link to, the interview can be found on http://www.xfree86.org/xnews/index.html), and I am glad to have a chance to explain what many many consider an apparent inconsistency. 

I believe, and since I have received many Board comments concurring, that Dave was saying that the middleman here is someone who was arbitarily and politically making points; not _technical_ ones.  My page states that these are leading-edge distros to underscore this point.

If you read the Forum, and elsewhere, the whole issue about the license (found at http://www.xfree86.org/legal/licenses.html) is one of 
politics and not technical supremacy.  Choosing against XFree86 4.4.0 is because your religious/political dogma decrees that you should, not because you do not want to avail yourself of the best in the X.

To prove my point, the Foundation series is not starting with their own decrepit base but ours, a point which Mr CooperSmith (not a spokesman for the Foundation by any means) has stated is an implicit acknowledgement of our technical superiority.  So, the difference then is one of politics or policy and not technical finesse or mechanism.  

Our distro-support page mentions those distros who make _mechanism and not policy_ choices; distros who choose technology over politics which is why they are 'leading edge' distros; distros who have made technical decisions in the process of catering to their end-user base. Naturally, in their best of breed decisions, they want XFree86 4.4. with the security updates, the maintenance fixes and such and not XFree86 4.3.RC02 however it is marketed.

In the final analysis though, isn't that why people choose free and open-source?  Because they want the best; because like the X credo, they want mechanism and not policy?  I think so and our http://www.xfree86.org/distro-support.html  page does too.

Georgina 


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