>From:hp@redhat.com> >To: Steve Swales <Steve.Swales@sun.com> >Cc: forum@XFree86.Org, Alan Coopersmith <alan.coopersmith@sun.com>, Steve Swales <steve.swales@sfbay.sun.com> >Subject: Re: [forum] A Call For Open Governance Of X Development On Mon, 24 Mar 2003 16:21:52 -0500 Havoc Pennington <wrote: > >On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 12:15:44PM -0800, Steve Swales wrote: >> As the current Chairperson of X.Org, you have my personal invitation to >> participate, and my personal promise that X.Org is committed to >> reforming itself into whatever the community feels it should be, as the >> stewardship body for the X standard. > >Thanks for that! > >> Having said that, I feel that this will not be an easy thing to do, >> but I am encouraged by the recent track record of other >> organizations which have successfully pursued the goals of free and >> open stewardship, while at the same time offering sufficient value >> for participation by a broad set of corporate (i.e. paying) >> sponsors. > >For the GNOME Foundation, we spent significant time discussing how to >incent companies to support the foundation and its activities, while >still ensuring that decisions were made for purely technical reasons. > >We were unable to come up with a solution. Quite simply, if paying a >fee does not mean more say in the organization, we are left with "you >should support the organization because its work needs doing and >benefits you" - which has a significant freeloader problem. Still, >this is what we did for the GNOME Foundation for lack of alternatives. > >I don't think we should beat around the bush. For me, and I believe >for many others, having anyone other than "all interested technical >domain experts" involved in decision-making is simply broken. Not only >is it wrong in a big picture sense, it is also bad for the companies >themselves in the long run. I want to see Red Hat benefit from correct >technical decisions, and would like safeguards to protect us from our >own inevitable silliness as we become a larger company. > >I would focus on two questions: > > 1) What ideas do people have to ensure X.org funding while completely > eliminating the ability to buy technical influence? [1] > > 2) If we have no ideas, is X.org willing to drop pay-for-say? > >Speaking for myself only, I would not support any form of X.org that >maintains pay-for-say. My personal guesstimate of the open source >community's views is that they will agree and that GNOME and KDE would >be willing to actively ignore a pay-for-say X.org if we had an >alternative open organization to turn to. I could be wrong, and people >may change their minds, including me. But the presumption against >pay-for-say is very, very high. Havoc - Why should a judgement of "pay-for-say" be any different for X.Org than for GNOME foundation? > > >I propose that we set a hard deadline for discussion and decision on >X.org, or it will drag on forever. There are a lot of practical reasons for resolving this very quickly, but I don't know who is the "we" who would set it. X.Org, with the participation of an XFree86 representative, have (as Steve indicated) already begun. > >Finally, I'd point you to the suggestion in the GNOME/KDE joint >statement that our primary open source X implementation be under the >same umbrella as our X standards organization. I agree this is an important suggestion, which which for my part, as an X.Org member, I would take into account. GNOME/KDE community opinion is (and has been) very welcome. Leon > >Havoc > >[1] One possible idea is pay-to-use-the-trademark instead of >pay-to-design-the-specs. i.e. a certification program. >_______________________________________________ >Forum mailing list >Forum@XFree86.Org >http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/forum