I'm not sure whether this falls in-scope or not, but I'd really like to
see a project plan that allows for the Open Source OpenGL
implementations to be binary compatible with OpenGL applications linked
against Sun's OpenGL libraries. Right now, due to the fact that Sun's
OpenGL implementation is closed (even the *ABI* is closed, although the
*API* is open) there isn't any reasonable way to achieve this.
There are a lot of folks with OpenGL applications on SPARC that will
never be able to use anything bug a closed-source Sun driver (on Sun 3D
graphics hardware, of course) until this is resolved. This is, IMO, the
worst kind of lock in.
If folks want more information, they can e-mail offline.
-- Garrett
Alan Coopersmith wrote:
> The X Window System Community has agreed to sponsor a new OpenSolaris
> project, FOX: The Fully Open X Project.
>
> The Fully Open X Project (FOX) will create a public Mercurial gate on
> opensolaris.org containing a merge of these three source bases:
> - the current OpenSolaris X code drops published by the Sun X team
> - the Xorg SPARC driver sources created by Martin Bochnig for Martux
> - the full X11R7.2 source builds created by Moinak Ghosh for Belenix
> This will provide a common source base for distros to build from,
> a faster release path for Sun's changes than releasing a snapshot
> tarball every 1-2 months, and access to changes not yet accepted
> by Sun's process into Solaris Express.
>
> While the long term goal is Solaris API/ABI compatibility, that won't
> be achieved initially (since Sun is still working on opening the
> sources required for certain API's not yet in open source releases).
> This will not be the master gate for Solaris for a while, but may
> eventually be the master gate for the open portions of the Solaris X
> consolidation.
>
> While no other formal OpenSolaris Projects are related to this work,
> as noted above, this work ties together work being done in the
> Solaris Express, Martux and Belenix distros.
>
> The X Window System Community thus requests the following from the
> OGB/opensolaris.org team:
>
> - A project page on the opensolaris.org web site
> (short name: "FOX", long name "Fully Open X Project")
> - A mercurial repository established under the project name "fox"
> with an associated fox-notify at opensolaris.org mailing list
> created for subscribing to commit notifications.
>
> The initial set of contributors/leaders for this project will be:
> Martin Bochnig (bochnig)
> Alan Coopersmith (alanc)
> Jay Cotton (jacotton)
> Moinak Ghosh (moinakg)
>
> These 4 people should be given write access to the project web page
> and the Mercurial repository. Alan & Jay are already Core Contributors
> of the X Community - the Community at this time grants Contributor status
> to Martin & Moinak, with the intention to review for Core Contributor
> status once the project is underway.
>
> The project for now will use the X Community's xwin-discuss mailing list.
> (If traffic in the future becomes too great for that list, a separate
> mailing list can be easily requested at that time.)
>
> [BTW: I will be on vacation from June 30 - July 8, so will be unable to
> respond to any questions about this project setup during that time. I
> believe both Jay & Martin are unavailable until July 9 as well, so if
> anything's unclear, we can deal with it when we're all back. I'll be
> doing the initial population of the Mercurial repository after I
> return.]
>
