Hello hello,
Felt like I should answer, too .. :)
> > * Is going KGI to be integrated in the new 2.4x kernel series?
>
> No.
Before that, I suppose all the old kgi drivers should be ported/cleaned up
for the new KGI or we won't hold much interest against the now-quite-working
fbdev drivers ..
> > Is GGI/KGI ending as a curiosity - another kind of graphics library - ,
>
> I am afraid it will - regarding Linux.
We (suntech) are using KGI. Public information about that is drawing
closer.. But I wish it was a standard part of the linux kernel and distros
that's for sure.
> It has a future, but I assume it will rather be in the embedded systems
> market. It's used quite some there .... ;-).
;-)
> Yeah, I know - all that sounds pretty pessimistic. And I always feel pretty
> sad, when it comes to that topic. GGI is "my baby" more than any other open
> source project. And there is quite some blood, sweat and tears I and several
> other people put into it, so it really hurts to see it fall in decay. I'm
> pretty busy these days juggling two jobs, so I don't have so much time left
> to work on GGI. While this is bad for GGI, it helps a little to distract me
> from my "broken heart" about the project's state.
It's not "my baby" as much as it is yours, but I definitely contributed a lot
of time and brain cycles to it, and while I'm happily using KGI in the
project that's been eating 100% of my time for 2 1/2 years now, it's still
sad that it's not the ubiquitous, uniform graphics layer that we've been
dreaming about... yet :-).
> But maybe some folks here would like to cheer me up a little ?
>
> What GGI needs is a driving force. Look at the mailing list. It's quiet.
> Really quiet. The only postings are a few newbies seeking help or asking for
> features, and from time to time, me, Marcus or a few others that annouce
> a little new feature they coded up, because _they_ needed it.
>
> Come one folks ! A project as big as GGI doesn't live by half a dozen
> semi-active coders. At least we need some _motivation_.
>
> Tell us what you need, tell us _that_ you need it, give us a hand
> implementing it, report bugs, and so on !
I agree - GGI needs a driving force. I'd say a new one, since:
* you have two jobs (and still univ, or ..?)
* Steffen is probably very busy with univ, and he's driving the KGI project
already
* "free time" is still a joke to me
* Marcus' time is better spent doing his excellent job on libggi, and most of
his time is taken by a nice daytime job
We probably therefore need a new visionary leader that will know how to
get from current point A' (working, seperate subsystems that are still
majorly underused, lacking PR, a proper website, and motivated, constant
coders, as well as a clear short-term goal) to point B (world domination
through graphics).
If somebody really is serious about it, I will make some free time to
help in the beginning (ie, contacting metalab for an account, making it so
that the cvs repository can be better administered, providing some clues
about kgi/libggi if I can)..
Face it, we should also find a corporate sponsor that can devote full-time
employees to the project. It could be suntech (just speaking for myself
here) if there's an intersection of goals, it can be somebody else
(redhat, suse, mandrake..) but I think this is needed, not for the leader,
but for (a) talented fulltime coder(s). This way it can really go forward..
GGI has insane potential if driven home; just using KGI already saved us
a lot of time and AFAIK Andy, you ported it in 48 hours, so it's not as
badly designed as Steffen thinks (but doesn't every father/mother of
a project think so :).
--
Emmanuel
