[forum] XFree86's Future and thoughts and suggestions

[Shawn Starr]

On Tue, Apr 01, 2003, David Dawes wrote:

>Core != commit access.  I'm not sure where that myth came from,
>but it has never been true.  There are 14 people with commit access,
>not all of them are core members, and not all core members have
>commit access.  I don't have an answer as to why only 2 committers
>regularly deal with general submissions, with a few others dealing
>with specific submissions.  Maybe we don't have the right 14.

Fair enough, I don't know how many there really are.

>How many people can commit directly to the mainline Linux kernel?
From what you're saying, it sounds like these maintainers submit
>patches to one person (Linus) rather than committing them into the
>mainline kernel themselves?  Is that correct?  XFree86 has 14 people
>who can commit into the mainline XFree86 tree, and anyone can submit
>patches to this group, whether they be people who set themselves
>up as maintainers who collect submissions from others, or people
>who want to submit their patches directly.

There is no CVS to commit with Linux, It's all done though patches and 
patchsets (from other people's BK trees of the kernel)the closest we come to 
CVS is Linus's BK kernel tree. But this is not open to anyone *except* Linus 
himself.

>Unless I'm missing something, you're using the Linux kernel model
>as justification for changes that don't match the Linux kernel
>model.  I'm genuinely trying to understand what you're getting at,
>so if I am missing something, please let me know what it is.

Well, you or some person (like Linus) should be able to accept or reject 
patches from the sub-maintainers of components of XFree86 perhaps.

>You haven't explained to me why they don't have that input right
>now.  Unless you're saying that they can only communicate it via
>'cvs commit'.

Not commit access, There just seems to be a lack of ideas coming from the 
different communities. Or, some of the ideas are so radical they break the 
X11 protocol. This is *NOT* XFree86's fault, but I don't know why this is. I 
hope this forum will change that.

Shawn.