Hi Jonathan,
In your platform[0], you state:
I have a proven history of releasing software on time, on schedule.
Project Xouvert, a stripped down version of the X11 source code, was
released two times, six months apart. We didn't achieve many of our
more ambitious goals, but we got a working release out the door on
time, both times.
This did not in any way line up with my recollection of how Xouvert
fared at all, so I challenged you about it on IRC:
< daniels> Project Xouvert, a stripped down version of the X11 source
code, was released two times, six months apart. We didn't
achieve many of our more ambitious goals, but we got a
working release out the door on time, both times.
< daniels> WHAT?
< daniels> SirDinosaur: my understanding is that the first release came
very late and was kind of a hack; I do not believe a second
release ever occurred
Unfortunately you never saw fit to reply.
This has been something that's been intriguing me for a fair while, so I
went digging.
I have no reason to believe that the first release didn't ever occur,
but 'on time' is interesting. Witness www.xouvert.org from October
24th, 2003[1]:
Release 1 (October 1 - November 1, 2003)
We will extract the X server source from the XFree86 CVS
repository, and make it compile stand-alone. Then we will
package it together with the latest video drivers and bugfixes
to coexist with current distributions of XFree86. We hope to
incorporate the DRI and Utah-glx work by release time, but if
will definately have it incorporated shortly after release.
Contrast this with the Xouvert 0.1 announcement[2]:
Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2003 05:24:40 -0800
Thanks to the persistence of 17 year old Icelandic genius Andri
Yngvason, and the support of the Xouvert team, our initial release is
ready.
You can download the source. It compiles and runs. Apply your favorite
fixes, patches, and changes, create patchsets, and mail them to this
mailing list so we can discuss them, critique them, and incorporate
them.
This release was either two months and six days, or one month and six
days, late; depends on how you look at it.
Presumably sometime around this stage (the web archive is from the 19th
of December, 2003), www.xouvert.org was changed to say[3]:
Roadmap
Next Release (April 1, 2004)
We will make the X server architecture more modular, as described in
this email[4] from Owen Taylor. We will also put in place the
infrastructure to release daily binary snapshots in RPM, Debian, and
tar.gz formats for all major distributions. Priority will be given to
those that provide us with facilities for compiling and testing. We
will continue to incorporate new video drivers and bugfixes as they
become available. We will definately incorporate the work of the DRI/DRM
project by this release, and hopefully also we will have the MAS(R)
sound extension to X integrated as well. We may update the build system
with a make/automake/autoconf replacement based on extending the Scheme
dialect implemented by a small Scheme interpeter.
January's list traffic[5] consisted of a discussion about the release
date[6], and nothing else of substance: you did not even post to any
other thread.
February's list traffic[7] consists of two mails: a mail entitled 'How's
Xouvert?' from 'Shawn'[8] which mentions Xouvert's loss of momentum and
asks for a status update (no reply), and someone called 'Cameron'[9] who
asks how to compile only the servers (no reply, but for the record --
#define BuildServersOnly YES). Not only did you not post during the
entire month of February (I believe there may have been extenuating
circumstances), but none of the developers did, either.
March's list traffic[10] sees your first post in months, in which you
announce[11] that there has been a long radio silence, and that 'Xouvert
at the moment is the XFree86 4.3 X server with Alan Cox's VIA drivers
added'. There was no code behind this. Indeed, as you state later in
the announcement:
Our commit repositories are NOT functional; they are non-existant due
to a hard drive crash.
I believe your statement on what Xouvert was at the time referred to
plans, not code. You mention that you were probably moving to the
commit repositories to fd.o; I do not recall this ever having happened,
there is no 'xouvert' group on gabe.freedesktop.org[12], and no posts
from you to sitewranglers@lists.freedesktop.org (the fd.o admin list).
So, at this time, we're assuming that there was no code, less than two
months away from a release. Indeed, the goalposts were shifted, release
2 would effectively be a no-op, and release 3 was going to be the
do-everything release.
There were three follow-up questions (none with any real effect on the
project, just musings about X, mainly; although an answer for 'what are
you going to do now they've changed the licence?' was pretty important,
one would think). None of these were answered. There was a fix
suggested for the documentation on the website, which was also
unanswered.
April 5th came and went[13] without any second release. I assert that
the second release never existed.
Someone suggested rewriting the build system again. Someone else
replied stating 'show us the code', and Alan Cox gave a gentle nudge
towards jhbuild, in terms of XML-based module descriptions. That was
the entire list traffic for April 2004 -- the month in which Xouvert 0.2
was released on time, meeting most of its goals. Apparently.
There was absolutely no list traffic in May.
In June[14], someone asked a question[15] about XTrap.
This question went unanswered. It is now nine months and four days
since that post, which was the last post to the Xouvert mailing list.
Which classifies it as a dead project.
www.xouvert.org now states that the release slated for April 1, 2004
(sic; should be April 5), was 'the last release of Xouvert for now'[16]
and that all the developers had moved on. However, there was never any
announcement of:
* a release,
* a pending release,
* a test release,
* the archives being recreated,
* anything other than 'XFree86 4.3 with Alan Cox's VIA patches'.
Indeed, web.archive.org suggests that this has been the only change made
to the site since the 12th of January, 2004[17]. No announcement of
where to get the mythical second release.
It's been a fairly lengthy dissection of Xouvert to date: I apologise,
and thanks for sticking with me. Back to Debian matters, I read your
platform, and attempt to reconcile your statement from the first
paragraph of this mail, with the history of Xouvert.
To me, one of the most important quantities in a DPL is trustworthiness.
I'm a voting member, and am not going to elect anyone who I cannot
trust. But, to me, it seems you have outright lied: release one was
late by one and a bit or two and a bit months, depending on how you look
at it, and release two never actually happened at all.
This to me, barring anything else at all, already places you below none
of the above in my ballot. If I am wrong, I am happy for you to prove
me so. If not, I would appreciate you correcting the record -- and if
you have been deliberately misleading Debian, you owe the entirety of
Debian an apology.
I await your speedy response, and hope to be proven wrong.
Daniel, Debian Developer[18]
[0]: http://www.debian.org/vote/2005/platforms/krooger
[1]: http://web.archive.org/web/20031024221347/http://www.xouvert.org/
[2]: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/xouvert-general/2003-12/msg00006.html
[3]: http://web.archive.org/web/20031219041846/http://www.xouvert.org/
[4]: http://www.xouvert.org/docs/modularising-xfree86.html
[5]: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/xouvert-general/2004-01/threads.html
[6]: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/xouvert-general/2004-01/msg00002.html
[7]: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/xouvert-general/2004-02/threads.html
[8]: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/xouvert-general/2004-02/msg00000.html
[9]: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/xouvert-general/2004-02/msg00001.html
[10]: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/xouvert-general/2004-03/threads.html
[11]: http://xouvert.org/announcement-20040326.html
[12]: The main freedesktop.org server, which hosts CVS/web/etc. Users
and groups were reimported post-compromise, with the small
exception of some users who were in no groups at all. No groups
were pruned at the time, except for a couple later on, by
maintainer request. Xouvert was absolutely not one of them.
daniels@gabe:/srv/cvs.freedesktop.org% getent group xouvert
daniels@gabe:/srv/cvs.freedesktop.org%
There is nothing relating to Xouvert that I could find on the
machine, either (within /srv; I did not look in home directories
for obvious reasons).
[13]: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/xouvert-general/2004-04/threads.html
[14]: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/xouvert-general/2004-06/threads.html
[15]: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/xouvert-general/2004-06/msg00000.html
[16]: While I geniunely appreciate the thanks offered me in this notice,
I don't know who Matt Harrison is; Mike A. Harris may know,
however.
[17]: http://web.archive.org/web/20040126035407/http://www.xouvert.org/
[18]: My account is currently locked due to a key compromise; I have recently
had my key signed by another local DD, and hope to have it back in the
keyring soon.
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