[forum] A strawman proposal for X.org & XFree86.org

[Stuart Anderson]

On Thu, 27 Mar 2003, Alan Coopersmith wrote:

> X.org
> -----
>
> X.org is a non-profit group dedicated to the development and
> promotion of the X Window System standards.  Membership is open
> to anyone who wishes to join the standards development process.
> X.org funding provides resources to support the development of
> the standards documents, standards compliance tests, and
> open source implmentations.  It also funds activities
> to promote the X Window System and encourage its adoption.
> Funding is received from corporate sponsors who benefit from the
> continued improvement of the X standards and software.
> Sponsorship is not required to participate in improvements, but
> does allow access to additional resources and benefits.  Sponsors
> include operating system vendors who provide X implementations,
> vendors who sell X implementations that can be added to other
> operating systems, makers of hardware that can be used with X,
> and other companies and organizations with an interest in the
> continued development of the X Window System.
>
> X.org activities are coordinated through an executive board consisting
> of representatives of the sponsors and representatives elected by the
> membership at large.  The executive board manages the X.org organization
> and funds, but has no involvement in technical decisions and standards
> beyond the allocation of funds.

So far, this sound a lot like an existing Standards group.


> X.org is the owner of the X Window System copyrights and trademarks,
> and is the latest in a line of organizations that has evolved from
> a MIT research project, to an industry consortium, and now to an open
> non-profit group.  The latest organization was modeled after portions
> of the Free Standards Group, GNOME Foundation, and IETF structures.


So why does it need to be a seperate group when one of these already provides
what you are describing, and has the respect of the entire community that
X.Org is trying to reach out to?


> Upon the release of X11R6.7, XFree86 shall integrate the X11R6.7 code
> into their code management system as the base of the "X.org Standards
> Sample Implementation" (SSI) branch.

Sheesh. We went over this what, 3 years ago?

We are currently trying to _reduce_ the number of branches of the X tree,
and prevent the creation of a new one. Having a seperate branch doesn't
contribute to this at all.


> The X.org SSI committee shall
> assume responsibility for managing the tagging of this branch.  An
> initial review shall be performed comparing the differences between
> the SSI branch and the current XFree86 branch, and then ongoing
> monitoring will occur of differences between the two branches.

This is time and effort that could better be spent improving a single
unified branch.

> The
> X.org testing laboratory shall perform regular compliance test runs on
> the SSI branch and the proposed addtions.

Again, this should be done on the single unified branch. Doing this on the
on the SSI branch only benefits the corporate members, and not the community
as a whole. Given that all of the corporate members are also selling Linux, I
don't see why there is continued interest to maintain this seperation.

> This will allow those who want to follow the latest innovations to use
> the XFree86 branch, while ensuring standards compliance and increased
> stability for those who still wish to follow the SSI branch.

This is encouraring the split to remain. Everyones effort should be focused
on ensuring that a single branch of a signle source tree has "commerical
grade" quality and stability.


                                Stuart

Stuart R. Anderson                               anderson@netsweng.com
Network & Software Engineering                   http://www.netsweng.com/
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