Re: communication

On Sun, Mar 23, 2003 at 12:37:59AM -0500, Owen Taylor wrote:
> On Sat, 2003-03-22 at 20:03, David Dawes wrote:
> > On Fri, Mar 21, 2003 at 07:07:06PM -0500, Mark Vojkovich wrote:
> > >On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, Keith Packard wrote:
> 
> > >> I have made limited progress in my attempts to address these issues. The
> > >> opening of the XFree86 CVS repository and developer mailing lists to
> > >> public access has benefitted X development significantly. In order to
> > >> improve the technical coordination with other open source projects, I
> > >> have become personally involved in many of them.
> > >
> > >  Yes, we know you have made progress in many aspects of the XFree86
> > >project.  Your contributions to this project are why you were a
> > >core XFree86 member.  You make it sound as though, despite being a core 
> > >member of XFree86, you did not represent the XFree86 project in those
> > >actions.  I always thought you were the XFree86 presence in those projects.
> > 
> > That was my understanding too.
> > 
> > >You make it sound more like you were merely the Keith Packard
> > >presence in those projects.
> > 
> > That's unfortunate.  I've been wondering why Keith has been bringing
> > up the lack of communication between XFree86 and those projects as
> > an issue when we all thought that *he* was the key part of that
> > communication channel.  It sounds like the best thing for the future
> > would be for more representatives from those projects to participate
> > directly in XFree86 development discussions ([email protected]).
> 
> I think perhaps the term "communication" here is not really representing
> the real problem. The real problem we've seen is perhaps one of 
> interest.
> 
> In general, beyond Keith and Jim (and to some extent Mark), I've seen
> very little interest among XFree86 developers in:
> 
>  - Updating the X rendering model to match current expectations
> 
>  - Specific needs of applications not being met by X currently.
> 
>  - Application performance (not how many rectangles can be drawn
>    per second, but how the things apps are actually doing perform) 
> 
>  - Protocol issues in general
>  
> As evidence for this, I'll put forward:
> 
>  - Lack of participation on [email protected]. (People complain
>    about render not being suited to hardware implementation, but
>    discussions about it were public and advertised to XFree86
>    developers from the very beginning.)
> 
>  - Lack of participation on wm-spec-list and xdg-list.
> 
>  - Lack of participation on desktop or toolkit mailing lists.
>    (Though maybe everybody is just in the KDE camp... since
>    I don't monitor those mailing lists.)
> 
>  - Lack of followups to mails from me to [email protected] on various
>    of these issues. (While XFIXES may not have been handled very
>    well, it's not like the issues that it tried to address weren't
>    brought up long before without any interest or comments.)
> 
> Now you might say that the current XFree86 people were too busy 
> with hardware drivers and general bug fixage to worry about this
> sort of stuff, and that nothing is keeping other people from
> getting involved.
> 
> But the fact that nobody other than Keith was working on these
> issues and getting stuff into XFree86 makes one wonder about structural 
> problems; from my perhaps biased perspective, this stuff is really
> a lot more interesting than support for flavor-of-the-day of some
> chipset, so you'd think that interested developers would be 
> crawling out of the woodwork. Perhaps the problem is that
> without current developers around to discuss, and review changes
> in this area, there is no way for developers to become engaged
> and eventually trusted.
> 
> Anyways, I just wanted to give some more details on where I see the
> problem; it's not necessarily that people are shutting their ears
> to the needs of the desktop, it's just that the needs of the
> desktop (other than for a working X server) don't seem an 
> interesting problem for the bulk of XFree86 developers. 
> 
> The desktop projects don't just need the assurance that they
> can mail [email protected], they need the assurance that there
> will be someone there paying attention.

I will say this. You definately seem to be making demands on an Open
Source project for someone to listen to your requirements. That's
not unreasonable, but it is unreasonable for you to want someone else
to code up the things you deem as needed for your own purposes for
the desktop your striving to produce.

I know you work for RedHat Owen, so why doesn't RedHat pay for someone
to work on RENDER improvements ? If they get seen as doing some really
great stuff, then just as Keith did, there's always CVS commit privileges
to gain from it.

RENDER started by SuSE employing Keith to work on it. If SuSE hadn't
done this, then I fear that RENDER wouldn't exist today. So why doesn't
another company stump up for this work if they really want to make it 
happen. This, it seems to me, is where the structural problem lies - not
at all with Open Source developers who hack on what itch they're scratching.

Alan.