Re: xorg , xfree86?

[Paul E Condon <pecondon@mesanetworks.net>]

On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 07:06:22PM +0100, Florian Kulzer wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 16:24:04 -0000, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> > Florian Kulzer wrote:
> > 
> > > for developers to contribute. Someone can make such a statement without
> > > being an aspiring contributor himself. I see neither a "promise" nor a
> > > "lie" in what he writes.
> > 
> > The lie was this: stating that it was not allowed to happen.
> 
> There is no justification for calling someone a liar unless you can
> prove that they intentionally spread false information. 

More precisely ...unless you can prove that they intentionally spread
information that they know to be false. This is very hard to prove,
and an accuser's knowing for a fact that a statement is false has
nothing to do with proving that the putative liar did not believe it
to be true.

In general, almost nobody is a liar because they invariably believe
their own lie, and they fail the test for knowing that the statement
is false.

> 
> > Anytime the topic came up, invariably it was from people who were not
> > going to do the work, but wanted someone else to do it for them.
> 
> The wikipedia page on XFree86 certainly suggests that people willing to
> contribute were denied CVS access. If you think you know better what
> really happened then you should maybe correct this article and cite
> sources to back you up.

I have read horror stories about outsiders trying to correct
information on wikipedia. I don't know whether they are true, but the
stories seem to have more than mere truthiness. But it hardly
matters. See above about proving someone is a liar.

There does seem to be an internal controversy within the Xwindow
developer community. How else can one explain the existence of a fork?
Luckily, there seem to be enough real developers in that community to
support two prongs of an Xwindows fork, maybe more. The two camps can
compete for talent from the same pool. Perhaps the competition will
cause to pool to grow.

I persist in my belief that issues of changes in the license had
something to do with the fork happening. It was not merely a spat
over a design decision where both sides had ego involvement. And,
certainly not a spat in which one side was *right* and the other
side *wrong*. 

All this has become much to heated for me to be interested in finding
supporting evidence for my position out there on the web, so don't
bother challenging my persistent belief. If I found such, wouldn't
the response be, 'Yes, but that's not the real reason.' ? Will
historians of technology write tomes on this issue? I wonder.

-- 
Paul E Condon           
pecondon@mesanetworks.net