[Members] Xorg BoD : Response to Peter Winston

[Daniel Stone]

On Fri, Oct 27, 2006 at 12:07:30PM -0400, Leon Shiman wrote:
> The community and the technology 
> could be greastly strengthened if that could be done.

How?

> One of the major 
> barriers continues to be the issue of inclusiveness. Public disparagement of 
> non-Linux platforms would have to end.

I don't really see much of this.  Of the currently active developers,
Eric Anholt is a FreeBSD guy, Alan Coopersmith works on Solaris, Stuart
Kreitman (who is also running for the board; I'd be interested to see
him there) also works for Sun, Alan Hourihane does Cygwin stuff ...

> Proprietary implementations of X for Windows need to be accepted.

Of course, and they are.  The same rule applies to them as to everyone,
though: making random demands of developers just won't work.  The NVIDIA
model seems to work pretty well, though.  They needed support for
redirecting Xv, and Aaron went through and did all the work to add the
interface, and convert all existing drivers to the interface.

If someone comes forward with a good idea and a useful patch, suffice to
say I doubt it'll be rejected.

But yes, it's true that most developers are probably not as interested
in proprietary implementations of X for Windows as in the SI.  Probably
because most of them don't have a way to immediately use it, and no way
at all to hack on it.

> Hosting functions also need to be distributed. 

I'm happy to distribute our hosting if someone comes up with a
compelling solution; so far X.Org has actively resisted this idea.

> The full range of issues affecting the hosted projects, the goals of FDO, 
> the structure and goals of the Foundation, active member and developer 
> habits and preferences, logistics , and finances need to be put on the 
> table. X.Org brings public institutional credibility to a common solution. 

fd.o's goal is to stimulate development of free and open desktops by
providing hosting and open forums for projects that need it.  That's it:
no hidden agendas, nothing to bring to the table.

> >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. 
> 
> Sponsorship is vital to the organization. Support for sponsorship has not 
> been uniform in this Board. The label "pay for say" has had a poisonous 
> effect.

As well it should -- we need to run, not walk, away from the previous
'pay for say' X model.  This is not to diminish the value of sponsors,
without whom the Foundation wouldn't be viable.  But we should be
extremely careful of avoiding pay for say.

> I personally believe that this label is misused, and that sponsor 
> funding is a valid, productive and product neutral mechanism for supporting 
> the technology.

Sponsor funding is a great way to support the technology, providing it's
not misused.

> If sponsors want it to happen, there's nothing to lose.

Sure there is: we could keep the sponsors and lose the development
community.  Wouldn't be the first time ...

Cheers,
Daniel
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