[forum] XFree86's Future and thoughts and suggestions

[David Dawes]

On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 12:56:40PM -0500, Shawn Starr wrote:
>On Tue, Apr 01, 2003, David Dawes wrote:
>
>>It seems to be a little known fact that most of the current committers
>>who have made significant contributions to XFree86 did so *before*
>>they had commit access.
>
>The problem is this, its not just about commit access it's about the will of 
>the core members to allow contributions into XFree86 so everyone can test it 
>out instead of blowing the patch out of the water. 
>
>I feel the whole core membership idea is a blockage to XFree86 development. 

Core != commit access.  I'm not sure where that myth came from,
but it has never been true.  There are 14 people with commit access,
not all of them are core members, and not all core members have
commit access.  I don't have an answer as to why only 2 committers
regularly deal with general submissions, with a few others dealing
with specific submissions.  Maybe we don't have the right 14.

>User develops patch, gives it to Xpert@ it may get some criticisism and may go 
>into the CVS tree or it may die silently.
>
>>The way I see it, the "community" says: "If you do X, you'll get
>>more people contributing".  We do X, and then we hear "If you do
>>Y, you'll ...".  I'm wondering what the next excuse will be if the
>>open commit access is given?  If little things like this prevent people
>>from contributing, then they don't have much motivation.
>
>What excuse? Please admit to everyone you are afraid of change that would 
>cause the loss of control over XFree86. You know and I know that's a not 
>true, You certainly don't see Linus loosing control over the kernel by having 
>lots of maintainers submit patches to him from developers all over.

How many people can commit directly to the mainline Linux kernel?
From what you're saying, it sounds like these maintainers submit
patches to one person (Linus) rather than committing them into the
mainline kernel themselves?  Is that correct?  XFree86 has 14 people
who can commit into the mainline XFree86 tree, and anyone can submit
patches to this group, whether they be people who set themselves
up as maintainers who collect submissions from others, or people
who want to submit their patches directly.

Unless I'm missing something, you're using the Linux kernel model
as justification for changes that don't match the Linux kernel
model.  I'm genuinely trying to understand what you're getting at,
so if I am missing something, please let me know what it is.

>If you really want XFree86 to change you need to decide if you're willing to 
>let the community, any by community I mean all kinds of developers input into 
>XFree86.

You haven't explained to me why they don't have that input right
now.  Unless you're saying that they can only communicate it via
'cvs commit'.

Speaking for myself.

David