Go for it Keith!

First of all, as a mini disclaimer. I am neither a developer nor contributor
to the XFree86 project or any other, my skills are not yet up to scratch.
But I am your average Linux desktop user.



A thread posted over at the Gentoo forums brought my attention to the
stirrings in XFree, since I started using Linux I have been grateful for X's
existence. I have however never been passionate or anything more than
grateful toward the project. It has always been clear to me that the project
was never really running as good as it could be, even without visiting the
xfree86 website and these lists.



I was more than pleased when I heard of this possible fork, and so was
everyone else I spoke to. I can see why Keith decided to keep plans of a
fork secret, from other core member's responses to the matter. From my point
of view it seems some of the core members have gotten too used to their
little circle and lost sight of what Linux and the unicies need from
graphical display software. As you all know, Linux is being pushed and
marketed in some areas as a desktop OS - I find this quite funny as the
actual graphical display software has major problems. Imagine a noble brave
character trying to make some progress in a war zone, and shouting "cover
 me" as they run in all guns blazing. Now, the person who they where
shouting "cover me" to, just sit there slowly fumbling with their weapon.
That's how I see the current situation between people trying to get Linux
recognized as a contender and XFree.



I believe X needs to be forked, not opened up but actually forked. You're
not going to get far by pushing a dead donkey. A new set of ideas, aims,
ideals and renewed enthusiasm.

The way I see it, is that Linux _needs_ this fork. Linux doesn't have a
chance of taking over the desktop market in its current state.



I don't think you need to worry about support Keith, as long as the fork has
a good open source community based framework there will be plenty of people
willing to help. Including myself, and more input from people such as ATI
and Red Hat.



I am confident that I speak the thoughts of many other desktop users just
like me.



Its time to change, and in this instance change is a good thing.





Thank you for your time.