X.Org Core Purpose: Free & Open Accelerated Graphics Stack

[phoronix]

Phoronix: X.Org Core Purpose: Free & Open Accelerated Graphics Stack

The 2015 X.Org Elections are finally getting started tomorrow after being delayed and running close on time for responding to SPI's resolution. Just in time for the elections to start, the revised foundation by-laws have been published that shift the focus of what the X.Org Foundation is about...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=New-X.Org-By-Laws

[MuPuF]

To ease the review, I converted our bylaws from odt to Latex before we started making amendments.

The canonical repo is: http://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/x...ion/bylaws.git
For some reason we never managed to have cgit working on this repo, so here is a copy in my personal repo: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~mperes/xorg_bylaws/

Hope this helps you make an informed choice.

[Del_]

Xorg is hardly about making an open graphics stack. It is about providing open graphics components to anybody. It has just been extremely unsuccessful in attracting proprietary parties. Makes me wonder how successful they had been if they had gone copy-left like Linux.

[MuPuF]

It has just been extremely unsuccessful in attracting proprietary parties. .

What does this even mean?

[cb88]

They should have left out the word accelerated... not because that isn't what they do but because it limits the scope.

You may want to run Xorg on a framebuffer.... or even wayland. That isn't accelerated.I'm just nitpicking though.

[FLHerne]

Was there ever any resolution, or at least clarification of the circumstances, regarding the rather bizarre ElementaryOS/SPI dispute earlier this year?

It seems Mr Drake is still listed as a director, so were the claims against him found to be incorrect? If not, his continued position doesn't reflect too well on SPI's intentions.

[MuPuF]

They should have left out the word accelerated... not because that isn't what they do but because it limits the scope.

You may want to run Xorg on a framebuffer.... or even wayland. That isn't accelerated.I'm just nitpicking though.

The applications you run may still want to use the GPU for rendering (in the wayland world)

I get your point though, I'll send it to the board of directors.

[Del_]

What does this even mean?

It means that the license of the graphics stack was chosen to be permissive in order to attract proprietary usage. Recall that Apple once based their display server on it. Today Apple has their own display server, Android has SurfaceFlinger, and even Ubuntu chose their own path. That leaves only one proprietary offering that I can recall (please enlighten me if there are more), and that is Sailfish. History has shown that copy-left is more efficient in attracting independent developers and in general building a community. Going permissive (like xorg and wayland has) probably means losing some of that. Then you should expect to gain in the other end, by getting paid developers from proprietary parties like Apple. I am simply commenting to the fact that I see no gain, and it makes me wonder what the loss is. This is hindsight of course, so not pointing fingers at choices made earlier, simply reflecting at this point in time.

[bridgman]

It means that the license of the graphics stack was chosen to be permissive in order to attract proprietary usage.

Saying "to attract proprietary usage" seems a bit misleading -- the X window system's oversight was originally set up when essentially all of the users were proprietary vendors. IIRC the MIT X consortium was largely funded by proprietary vendors and that is probably still true today thanks to Sun. Proprietary usage was the norm until Linux on x86 started to displace proprietary Unix on RISC processors.

[Del_]

Saying "to attract proprietary usage" seems a bit misleading -- the X window system's oversight was originally set up when essentially all of the users were proprietary vendors. IIRC the MIT X consortium was largely funded by proprietary vendors and that is probably still true today thanks to Sun. Proprietary usage was the norm until Linux on x86 started to displace proprietary Unix on RISC processors.

Agreed, there are historie reasons if we go back to the xfree days. However, for wayland or even xorg my point stands, or do you see the UNIX crew still contributing?