[Members] Xorg BoD

[Barton C Massey]

In message <000101c6f7e2$814af280$6421140a at server> you wrote:
> 1) What would you like to see  X, and X.org look like in 3-5 years.

[Note that unless re-elected we'll only be on the Board for
 two years.  Still, 3-5 years is a reasonable time frame to
 think about.]

I'd like to see about 20 "super-contributor" X developers
below the toolkit layer, and about 200 regular contributors.
If we get that kind of active participation, I think many of
the technical problems will take care of themselves.  I'd
like to see X.org play the role of facilitating the
activities of these folks, as well as those toolkit and
higher (see Q2), by providing organizational leadership:
help with communications, meetings, funding, etc.

> 2) What is the ideal relationship with Freedesktop? 

Merger.  De facto, most of the X.org developers and members
are already also freedesktop.org anyhow.  I'd like to help
work out the politics of making it de jure.  I think that
the split between the orgs is more the result of political
and historical accident than a good idea of some kind.

> 3) What about sponsors, Sponsorship $ has dropped
> precipitously since X.org was reformed. Do you think that
> X.org should have sponsors anymore?  Why/why not. If your
> company is not a sponsor why should anyone be.

I think it's very important that X.org find sponsors to
provide the resources it needs to get its job done.
However, as I've expressed before, I think clearly
identifying the need for resources comes first.

I think the current drop in sponsorship mostly reflects a
drop in need and even desire for X.org to do
resource-intensive things.  If that need and desire
increases, I have faith, based on past experience, that
those with funding and people will come through with
support.

> also I wish someone could explain to me, why company(s)
> donating and pooling money to solve a particular problem
> causes a problem, while a single company doing the
> engineering does not cause a problem.

I think that companies donating and pooling money to solve a
particular problem is good---if that problem can be solved
by spending money.  Most of the "single company" engineering
I've seen is actually 1-3 developers in a large company,
working on their own and the community's priorities with
their employer's blessing.  In other words, the company is
donating the time of skilled, experienced people.  Such
people usually can't just be bought, at least not for any
reasonable amount; for example, look what it took to sever
Linus from Transmeta.

Money can be extremely poisonous to open source development.
It tends to refocus priorities in inappropriate ways and
leads to friction and jealousy.  The exceptions mainly seem
to be when the community first figures out a solution
involving funds, then figures out where the funding is
coming from, then expends exactly the planned amount of
funds in exactly the agreed-upon fashion.  Even then it
sometimes backfires.

> and how can small companies contribute if they can't
> afford full time staff.

By letting their staff work even a few hours a week on
community stuff.  By open sourcing useful code they are
producing anyway as the result of their work.  By helping
with testing and bug reporting, and helping their customers
do the same.  These kinds of contributions are extremely
valuable, and within the reach of even many tiny startups.

    Bart Massey
    Assoc. Prof. Computer Science
    Portland State University
    bart at cs.pdx.edu