Keith Packard's Xfree86 Fork Officially Started

Reivec writes "I was having a discussion with Keith Packard on IRC about the current developments in the XFree86 Saga and politics already discussed here earlier, and I learned many interesting things. The project has a new website, xwin, and things are getting underway. 'We're in the process of building community, from that we can construct a government. It's a hard process to construct a representative system from what we have now, so it will take a bit of time. Weeks, not months. --Keith'" Read on for some more details. Update: 04/13 03:30 GMT by T : Reader Khalid points to this informative interview with Packard at Linux Weekly News, too.

" The site is has only been up a day or so and there isn't a lot on it right now, but he would like to see a lot of community involvement on the site and many user submitted stories to get conversation rolling. A french site has already taken notice and posted some information on xwin as well. Since such a fork could make a large impact on many *NIX users, I felt the need to ask, 'assuming you had an active fork under development, how interchangable would you expect it to be with Xfree (assuming release builds). Do you think distros would be quick to change if it offered improvements? Or could they provide both and have the user choose upon installation?' Keith replied, 'Given that distros will have input into how it gets built, I expect they'd be interested in a version closer to what they need. And, given that RH and Debian maintainers are both actively encouraging changes, it's hard to see how they wouldn't want to follow. (or lead).' So if you have had any interest at all in the XFree86 development, this is definitely a community site you should take advantage of."

Meanwhile...

[Black Parrot]

> We're in the process of building community, from that we can construct a government. It's a hard process to construct a representative system from what we have now, so it will take a bit of time. Weeks, not months.

Meanwhile, have patience with the looting and plundering...

IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[smoondog]

X forks You!

(Sorry)

-Sean

Re:Not a surprise.

[entrigant]

I, think, it just, may be, possible, that you are, overusing, commas. ;)

Re:the usual misconceptions

[geekoid]

yeah, I loved the "rip ot the fluff" comment. Like there has been this pile of un-needed code that nobody ever noticed.
"Hey guys, look at this, there has been flight similator code in here!"

Lingo.....

[telstar]

"Weeks, not months."

• Sounds like how this whole Iraq thing went down. Should we expect the shock and awe phase shortly after that?

First Lie Post

[Lord Sauron]

This is another American lie. Keith Packard, American official, is NOT free, he was easily subjugated by our dauntless troops. And he possessed not a fork, but a knife of mass destruction.

Note: I rewrote this message because some infidelic moderator modded it as offtopic. But I have no fear. Will trench my post and resist to the negative mods.

Re:the usual misconceptions

[Overly Critical Guy]

Ever tried developing for X? It's a huge, towering bitch that looks like an inside-out Jabba The Hutt.

-1, Fundamentalist

[Anonymous Coward]

'nough said.