Re: A Call For Open Governance Of X Development

On Mon, 24 Mar 2003 17:59:28 -0500 Havoc Pennington wrote:
>Subject: Re: [forum] A Call For Open Governance Of X Development
>On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 05:21:56PM -0500, Leon Shiman wrote: 
>> Havoc - Why should a judgement of "pay-for-say" be any different for 
X.Org 
>> than for GNOME foundation?
>
>I'm not saying it should be - GNOME Foundation doesn't give any
>special benefits to corporate members. 
>
>http://foundation.gnome.org/documentation.html
>
>I would definitely not argue X.org (or an XFree86+X.org combo) should
>be different from GNOME Foundation; our incorporation and setup took
>years and lots of pro bono legal work, and works well, so one idea
>might be to recycle the GNOME bylaws etc.  rather than rehashing all
>the arguments and finding new lawyers and on and on. ;-) But I have no
>illusion that will really happen. ;-)

A lot of work went into creating X.Org free from the controls of the X 
Project Team. Since the GNOME Foundation and  X.Org share some members, it 
would seem to this observer that there might not be barriers to borrowing 
organizational structure may not be so high. First we need agreement on its 
role.
 
>
>> >I propose that we set a hard deadline for discussion and decision on
>> >X.org, or it will drag on forever.
>> 
>> There are a lot of practical reasons for resolving this very quickly, but 
>> I don't know who is the "we" who would set it. X.Org, with the 
participation 
>> of an XFree86 representative, have (as Steve indicated) already
>> begun.
>
>What I'm saying is that I would like us (us = whoever is interested)
>to proceed with the creation of an X.org alternative after some finite
>time has elapsed without X.org being repaired. i.e. we can't wait
>indefinitely; it's been pretty clear that X.org is broken for years
>now.

This is a separate discussion; but MAS and substantial suppport for XFee86, 
plus the Xinerama and IPV6 standards work are there.

>
>But at this point X is actually starting to move forward quickly, and
>it's becoming important to explicitly resolve the issue.  When is an
>API "done" and when might it still change due to standardization? We
>need an answer to that question.  We need a way to formalize the
>freedesktop.org process. We needed all this last year, as demonstrated
>by the fontconfig/STSF thread.

I agree that action is way overdue.

>
>Call me a pessimist, but I'd expect X.org to move slowly, and then
>come up with a proposal that falls short of what it should be.  I
>don't necessarily think people have bad intentions, but if you have a
>particular structure wired into your finances, your bylaws, and your
>external commitments, you can't just change it overnight without
>making people angry and potentially breaking the law.

I am not sure this accurately reflects where X.Org and its members are. I 
hope you are wrong. I'll do whatever is in my power to see that X.Org moves 
forward. We'll see.

>
>This may not be the fault of the people at X.org, but if it's going to
>take a year to change, we need to look elsewhere, regardless of whose
>fault it is.

Yup. I'm part of that "we".

Leon
>
>Havoc