On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 11:37:34 +0000, Keith Whitwell wrote: > XFree86 BOD wrote: > > >It has been brought to the attention of the XFree86 Core Team that one > >of its members, Keith Packard, has been actively (but privately) seeking > >out support for a fork of XFree86 that would be led by himself. He is > >also in the process of forming a by-invitation-only group of vested > >interests to discuss privately concerns he has about XFree86 and the > >future of X. He has consistently refused to even disclose these concerns > >within the context of the XFree86 Core Team, which makes his membership > >of that team unviable. As a consequence, Keith Packard is no longer a > >member of the XFree86 Core Team. > > What specifically does the XFree86 bod see as being wrong with the idea of > a 'by-invitation-only group' managing X server development? Isn't that > exactly what the core team & xfree86 BOD have been doing all along? Not exactly. Long ago, that was probably right, but these days you could probably see the Core Team as a bunch of committers to the CVS, obviously with their own areas of technical knowledge as well. And yes, we've met on occasion, but more in the reality of a coding frenzy to work on what we wanted to work on. More recently to talk about XFree86 5.0, of which I've sent what I wrote down to this list already.
As for the BOD list, the Core Team doesn't know what goes on within that list either, not that it bothers me at all. > Maybe the core team & bod could explain what is being hinted as a new > spirit of openness and how that is proposed to effect the XFree86 > development process and strategy? Will it mean forinstance an end to the > sort of behind-closed-doors discussions that appear to have lead to this > announcement? You'd be surprised if you saw what is actually discussed on the Core Team lists. Not much at all, apart from recent events that led up to this email. I have to say, that a lot of the Core Team is still in the dark on why Keith decided to divert his attention away from XFree86 in the way that has transpired. We're as much in the dark as you Keith Whitwell (thought I'd better add your surname to avoid confusion). > Please forgive my somewhat cynical tone... The best strategy to fight a > fork would be to open up XFree & thereby make forking unnecessary. It > seems like that is whats being attempted, but can the leopard change its > spots? Sometimes I wonder if it knows it has them. Apart from when I was a teenager, I can remember having spots. > OK - some concrete proposals, with cynicism turned off: > - Make BOD minutes public That would be good, if I knew there were any minutes, which I don't think there are. > - Open all core team meetings to the public, and if feasible post > minutes, transcripts or even audio feeds. As for my 'XFree86 5.0 TODO' email, that's what was intentional. > - Extend CVS access to regular contributors. Use scripts or > whatever to control access to subtrees if you want. This comes up from time to time, and I'm sure will get discussed even more. I know there have been offers to others for CVS commit access, and some have refused and some have accepted. The consensus of who gets commit access has always been - if they show competance at sending patches in, then after a period of time, no doubt they'll get it. It's the same as the DRI, but with more of a prolonged period of evaluating that persons patches. I guess this 'prolonged' period, is the stickling point for most. > - Consider dropping the BOD and core team ideas in favour of an > elected committee. Examine recent trends in managing other large projects. As I mentioned above, think of the current Core Team, as a bunch of committers that review what comes into the various fixes/patches lists. Then extend the Core Team to specialized areas too in which they were forseen, and as such were granted CVS access. If the community see these teams as closed groups, then like you say, we disband these groups, or try and put out a better explanation of what they mean. > Just generally get down off your high horses and accept that the developers > out there won't wreck xfree86 if you let them participate & accept them as > equals... I understand this point, and it comes down to the fact that there still needs to be some level of control of who gets commit access, just like any other open source project. It's probably not moving quick enough for some though. > Of course, if xfree starts accepting more developers, it will make it > harder for us in the dri tree as we tend to benefit from xfree's > exclusionary practices -- developers find it easier to get cvs access for > DRI than XFree86, so we pick up some talented developers that get fed up of > waiting for patches to be applied to xfree cvs. But then again, what is > the dri tree but a friendly fork to workaround for xfree's closed > development methodology? If xfree really opened itself up, the first thing > they'd do is extend an invitation to merge with the dri project, right? > Maybe that's the acid test, or maybe it's whether we'd accept... Then shut up, if you don't want your DRI developers nicked :0) Only kidding. Alan. ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Tablet PC. Does your code think in ink? You could win a Tablet PC. Get a free Tablet PC hat just for playing. What are you waiting for? http://ads.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/redirect.pl?micr5043en _______________________________________________ Dri-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dri-devel
