[forum] A Call For Open Governance Of X Development

[Daniel Stone]

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[Apologies for breaking threading, I'm just reading forum@ via
pipermail].

On Fri, 21 Mar 2003 21:12:57 +0100, Egbert Eich wrote:
> You have the intention to change governance of XFree86 so that you=20
> want to introduce a new membership model in which "anyone with the=20
> interest and ability to join and vote".=20
> Specifically you state:
>=20
> > It is therefore essential for the community to be involved in the
> > governance of X development. Two key elements in a community-governed
> > project are:
> >=20
> >    1. A low barrier to become a voting member.
> >    2. Regular elections of the government by all of the members.
>=20
> [...]=20
>=20
> Which is really a broad base. This is an interesting idea and it
> sounds very natural.
> Most OpenSource software development projects don't work that way.
> You say:
>=20
>  > Community governed projects such as Gnome, KDE and Debian have
>  > well-established membership policies. All allow anyone with the intere=
st
>  > and ability to join and vote.
>=20
> Debian is different in nature, and for KDE this is simply not
> true. Membership in KDE e.V. (an organisation registered in=20
> Germany according to German law) is to my knowledge by-invitation-only.
> Its purpose is purely administrational, organizing events, paying=20
> bills, managing the bank account. Their board (in German 'Vorstand')=20
> exercises no control over the development of KDE.

Yes; the board is entirely incidental to technical issues. To join KDE,
it's quite simple: code for a bit, get someone to commit it, and then
ask the CVS dudes for access, telling them who "sponsored" your commits.
It didn't take me too long to join KDE, after doing a bit of code.

KDE e.V. has absolutely no technical control over KDE, nor
administrative control. If KDE e.V. wanted myself removed as a KDE
developer, they couldn't get it to happen. Things in KDE are decided by
consensus among core developers - generally, if something needs to
happen, it's discussed on kde-core-devel, details thrashed out,
implementation details proposed, et al.

This is how KDE works, and it's entirely incidental to KDE e.V. - the
non-profit's function is to be an umbrella for KDE - a place where
grateful users, companies, et al, can donate money. It then uses this
money to do various things - support KDE development efforts through
providing resources, fly KDE hackers together for semi-regular core
developer meetings, and more. This is what KDE e.V. does, and it's
irrelevant to Keith's statement about KDE.

To compare KDE e.V's board with the XFree86 BoD is irresponsible: KDE is
governed by consensus. Release dudes are chosen, important decisions are
made, and new developers are added (and existing ones removed). Without
slight to the excellent KDE e.V. board members, *most* of them are far
better board members than code hackers.

It's a sharp contrast to XFree86, which is run by the BoD and the Core
Team. My view on those is neither here nor there, and the way it runs
has already been stated. I'll leave it to you (the reader) to determine
the contrast.

> The Gnome Foundation is the only organization that comes to mind that
> has a turely elected board.=20

Which is mainly filled with corporations, a la the KDE League. The
League mainly does our PR and corporate-friendly work, and again, is
entirely independent from KDE developers, and development issues.

> Most OpenSource projects are led by individuals who have been=20
> formally or informally been accepted as leaders for their long
> standing commitment, their experience and experise. If a formal
> governing body exists (in many cases because it is require by
> law) these boards perform purely administrational or political
> tasks.=20

Yes, but "led" is subjective. Being the Debian Project Leader has often
been compared to herding cats, and it's often joked that the DPL needs
consensus and a General Resolution to wipe his nose (we've never had a
female DPL).

The DPL exerts no technical authority, and is mainly just a single point
of reference for someone who "wants to talk to whoever runs Debian".
Mainly a media-friendly and corporation-friendly position, really
(again, no slight to the excellent and very technically-able DPLs Debian
has had).=20

> The gcc steering committee is an example here: It administrates=20
> the CVS and Web servers and - as this is a matter for the FSF=20
> - watches over license issues. It consists of the original people=20
> who initiated egcs, new members are invited in.
> Where is the flaw in your proposal?
> How would a serious developer feel who has worked his butt off
> if anyone with little to no involvment in his project would be
> able to elect who is to preside over it - on a one-man one vote
> basis - with the same voting rights as him?

A 75-year old who has volunteered on the polling booths and with various
civic projects has the same right to vote as anyone who's just turned
18: them's the breaks.

> How would this person feel if soemone happened to be elected=20
> to take over the leadership who has not written a single line=20
> of code for the project, but for example happens to be working=20
> for a "System integrator and distributors packaging X technology=20
> in various forms"?

Why not? I'd personally feel good about it, if the person was a better
leader. Some people are brilliant leaders, and their time is best spent
leading, rather than hacking - to have to lead may actually *detract*
from their work. If the distributor was an excellent leader, more power
to him.

The leader doesn't have to be the best hacker, just the best leader. Any
other mindset is selling yourself short.

Oh, and by the way, distributors do a lot more than you think. 18,000
lines of patches, all of which have to work and apply cleanly, and then
there's the small matter of the 6 or 7 architectures that RedHat
packages have to work on, as well as 13-17 that Debian packages work on.
Combine this with the fact that most XFree86 releases only work on i386
and powerpc out of the box, and it's a seriously non-trivial effort that
involves a lot more hacking than you think, especially since we are most
often the first point of contact for users with bugs, so we end up
solving a lot of problems ourselves.

It's a non-trivial effort, and I invite you to try something such as
updating Debian's XFree86 packages to the next major release some day.

> Do you expect any serious developer would continue to work on
> this project?

Yes, there are many serious Debian and KDE developers who don't care
about who leads them, as long as they lead well. Some don't really care
at all, since it doesn't directly affect them.

I've continued working on those projects, happy in the knowledge that
I'm being led by the best *leader*, not being led by someone who happens
to be really good at something else, but poor at leading.

> Now what we do need are interfaces to those project that group
> around XFree86.=20
> This is an issue that needs to be worked out but it is a two
> way issue.=20
>=20
> >     * Lack of cooperation with other projects
> >=20
> >       The KDE and Gnome projects were forced to form the freedesktop.org
> >       project to extend and enhance X Window System standards because
> >       XFree86 refused even to participate in the process.
>
> Now just for my curiosity:
>=20
> On which occasion has XFree86 refused to participate in this=20
> process?
> Maybe some of the UI people here can help me out?=20
> As we also want to hear critizism this should be openly discussed
> here.

I'm honestly unsure about the mechanics of how XFree86 was approached
and refused, but my experience with freedesktop stuff as a KDE developer
has been that it's all been done without any support from XFree86, to
work around some of the limitations in XFree86.

I think Mike put it extremely elegantly: I'm all for X11 improving,
however that may be done, and I'm certainly not going to pick a side and
say "he's right, you're wrong". All I'll say is that the Slashdot/OSNews
crowd depresses me, and I personally want to just get back to working on
the various projects, one of which is improving X11 (sadly, my time is
exceptionally limited, to say the best).

Daniel, KDE developer, Debian XFree86 4.3 packager

ObDisclaimer: I'm speaking for myself here, and not for KDE, Debian, or
my employer. Not even either of my dogs.

--=20
Daniel Stone 	     <daniel@raging.dropbear.id.au>             <dstone@kde.o=
rg>
Developer - http://kopete.kde.org, http://www.kde.org

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