Re: A Call For Open Governance Of X Development

Havoc Pennington writes:
 > 
 > I'm not sure exactly what's meant here. I don't remember an email
 > exchange like "will you work with freedesktop.org?" "hell no!" ;-)
 > 
 > I do think that freedesktop.org and other kinds of X enhancements
 > should live in the same organization, ideally, but I don't know that
 > anyone has actively tried to make that happen or keep it from
 > happening.
 > 
 > It's more that the desktop/toolkit projects have assumed that X.org is
 > hopeless and XFree86 isn't interested. Either of those assumptions may
 > be wrong.

Havoc, 

I'm glad that you take into account that this assumption may have
been wrong. 

 > 
 > The bottom line is that common initiatives to improve our GUI should
 > all be under a big shared umbrella, and it'd be nice to figure out how
 > to create that umbrella. At the moment there's some stuff that falls
 > through the cracks between existing organizations (GNOME, KDE,
 > XFree86, X.org). freedesktop.org tries to mop up some of that, but
 > really you can think of freedesktop.org as an emergency patch more
 > than a correct structural solution.

I have no doubts that anyone within XFree86 would agree with you on
this. Let us stop and complain about what hasn't been done and 
what should be done and proceed making proposals on how to establish
this.

 > 
 > Take a concrete problem: we have this huge stack of ICCCM
 > extensions/clarifications. Should those be merged into the ICCCM or in
 > some way "blessed"? Who would do that and how?
 > 

I'm far from being able to to propose how a correct structural
solution should be. I would think that any issues with some relation
to the X Windowing System should be done within XFree86. The ICCCM
seems to be such a case.
The initial step for ICCCM extensions/clarifications would be
to make a public proposal, something like an RFC for everybody
with some interest in the matter to read and comment on.
In the past this has been done by the X Consortium therefore 
today it would be a matter for X.org. I'm not sure if the way
how X.org is set up today allows for input by all the parties
interested.
Therefore it seems to be natural if this evaluation process is
hosted by XFree86 to give a wide audience the opportunity to
contribute and to allow for a timely standardization process.

I don't want to disclose too much at the moment as I want to 
give me the opportunity to add a little more structure and 
David Dawes the chance to make a public announcement, but 
XFree86 will very soon have a tool that allows for a speedy 
publication of proposals, extensions, projects, ideas etc.

Egbert.