[Please CC me on replies: I'm not subscribed.]
On Sat, Mar 24, 2007 at 10:51:04PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@connexer.com> wrote:
> > I don't buy it. The license change to XFree86 was committed on 13
> > February 2004:
> >
> > http://cvsweb.xfree86.org/cvsweb/xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/LICENSE.sgml.diff?r1=1.23&r2=1.24&hideattic=0
> > http://www.mail-archive.com/cvs-commit@xfree86.org/msg03271.html
> >
> > The X.Org Foundation was formed on 22 January 2004. The XFree86
> > disaster started long before either of those events.
>
> You still ignore facts!
>
> I was quoting one of the leading X.org members who is obviously better
> informed than you.
>
> Do you really believe that it was posible to obtain a single letter
> top level domain name in 2004?
>
> X.org has been founded around 1987.
>
> Too much FUD from you, I need to stop replying here....
The X Consortium is quite old, yes, and x.org as a domain name has been
around for quite some time. X.Org as an organisation (part of The Open
Group) was XC's successor, and had basically no influence on X
development, and became a front for corporate interests. The X.Org
Foundation, as the successor to X.Org/TOG, was founded in 2004, as
Roberto noted.
While Sun have undoubtedly contributed valuable sponsorship and
developer time (Alan Coopersmith in particular, though he has always
been active), the fork would've happened with or without Sun. It
happened because the X development community at the time found XFree86's
relicensing unacceptable, and was icing on the cake to the direction
XFree86 had been taking for quite some time.
The X development community had essentially reformed around fd.o, and
it was important to keep it moving forward as a separate organisation
that could revive both the XFree86 codebase and the X.Org name,
drawing together distributors and the open source community (who were
rallying around fd.o, and communicating extensively with each
other[0]), and the corporate interests such as Sun, who had previously
not been strongly involved with the open source side of things, but
are involved in development today.
So, please stop using the X.Org Foundation as an example for corporate
interests dictating the direction of a project, because that makes
absolutely no sense whatsoever[1], and is otherwise irrelevant to
the cdr* discussion.
Daniel, X.Org Foundation board member, fd.o type, X input maintainer, et al
[0]: At the time of the split, I was one.
[1]: One of the reasons the old X.Org/TOG and XC struggled for relevance
was that corporate politics dominated above all, and people fought
to see whose technology would be officially backed by X.Org, and
fought also for funding to develop technologies, which lead to
disasters like MAS, which never gained any community traction.
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