[Members] Re: disconnect from board to active developers

[Barton C Massey]

In message <17718.38743.844238.633379 at wlan-hermes.suse.de>
Egbert Eich wrote:
> Alex Deucher writes:
> 
>  > I haven't seen the budget numbers so I don't know how
>  > realistic this would be, but would Xorg ever consider
>  > directly funding the development of new drivers or
>  > significant infrastructual updates?
> 
> If you talk to some of the old guys they will explain to
> you that funding development in a free software project
> has caused things to deteriorate in the X Consortium.  I'm
> sure Jim Gettys can give you more input here.  The problem
> here is that it will create a two class society.

One important exception is funding of student projects.  I
think Google's Summer of Code program has shown us that we
can provide small funding to students on a competitive basis
without badly disrupting things.  I would be happy to help
in setting such a thing up, and would encourage the Board to
do so.

> One such thing that Jim Gettys is advocating is the conversion of
> the many - sometimes strange - documentation formats we can find
> in the source tree to one modern documentation format which can
> serve as a basis for preparing documentation for different purposes
> and devices.

I've done some tiny amount of initial work on this, but got
sidetracked.  Having a qualified, funded student to get the
project off the ground with our assistance would be awesome.

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