RE: Discussing issues

["Rich Murphey" <Rich@WhiteOakLabs.com>]

You state issues very clearly, but cloud the
status by stating your own situation as a
norm for those in responsible positions
within XFree86.  Your situation is not and
has never been the norm for XFree86 officers.
If anyone has some evidence otherwise, I'm
sure it can be resolved because XFree86 was
forced into commercial independence at no
small price and has always intended to
maintain it.

Rich



> -----Original Message-----
> From: forum-admin@XFree86.Org 
> [mailto:forum-admin@XFree86.Org] On Behalf Of Alan Coopersmith
> Sent: Monday, April 21, 2003 6:26 PM
> To: forum@XFree86.Org
> Subject: Re:  Discussing issues
> 
> 
> Rich Murphey wrote:
> >>And what I mean by my comment is slightly different. XFree86
> >>consists of a lot of people who are working on XFree86 for 
> >>their own personal gain, for the gain of their company, or 
> >>for other similar reasons, not just out of random charity. 
> >>XFree86 works rather better for that I suspect than if it didn't.
> > 
> > Who works on XFree86 for their personal gain, or company gain?
> 
> I do.  Contributing patches to XFree86 to make changes Sun 
> has made in our Xserver keeps our code closer to XFree86, 
> reducing the cost of merging XFree86 changes back into our 
> servers, and allowing us to benefit from the bug fixing & 
> feature enhancements made in XFree86 for much less than doing 
> the work ourselves.  (In Sun's case, we're just getting 
> started here, but pretty much every Linux vendor has been 
> doing exactly the same thing, getting the same benefits, for 
> years.  After all, that's pretty much the main business case 
> for any commercial vendor participation in any open source project.)
> 
> The question here shouldn't really be who has vested 
> interests, as others have pointed out, many people do, and 
> it's a good thing, since it helps motivate them to contribute 
> to XFree86.  (I know I wouldn't be able to spend as much time 
> on it if my managers didn't consider it in Sun's best 
> interest to have me spend part of the time they pay me for to 
> work on it.)  The concern with vested interests is how much 
> influence they have on people's decisions regarding the 
> project, and whether or not they would cause someone to make 
> a decision that benefits their vested interests but is 
> detrimental to the project as a whole.  So far, I've seen 
> nothing to indicate that has happened or is in danger of happening.
> 
> -- 
> 	-Alan Coopersmith-      alan.coopersmith@sun.com
> 	 Sun Microsystems, Inc.   -   Sun Software Group
> 	 Quality, Integration, & Customer Success (QICS)
> 	 Platform Globalization Engin. - X11 Engineering
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Forum mailing list
> Forum@XFree86.Org
> http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/forum
> 
> 
> 


_______________________________________________
Forum mailing list
Forum@XFree86.Org
http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/forum