[forum] XFree86's Future and thoughts and suggestions

[Mark Vojkovich]

On Tue, 1 Apr 2003, David Dawes wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 12:56:40PM -0500, Shawn Starr wrote:
> >
> >I feel the whole core membership idea is a blockage to XFree86 development. 

  I did my most significant work on XFree86 before becoming a core
member.  I was "promoted" to core *because* of my work.  I did not
have CVS access before that.  I once maintained the XF86_S3 server,
wrote the S3 driver in the XF86_SVGA server, maintained the mga
driver in the XF86_SVGA server, was principle author and maintainer
of the mga driver in XFree86 4, principle author and maintainer
of XAA and principle implementor and maintainer of Xv, all without
having CVS access.  Not that this was a good thing to have to
do all of this without CVS access, but it was done.  Granted,
patches were reviewed and committed in a more timely matter back
then.  It's not core membership that's a blockade, but the ability
to get things into the tree.  This didn't used to be a problem 
when the people with commit access (then it was only the core)
had more time.  Core is merely a status position.  They used to
be the only people with commit access, but more recently this has
ceased to be true.  The answer is not getting rid of core, or
promoting more people to core, but adding more committers.  In
my opinion we don't need core, since it is only symbolic, but
that's a different matter.


> 
> 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.

   We don't have the right 14.  We have alot of holes in our coverage.
The thing is that people have certain areas of expertise.  If you
have a patch for XAA or the nv driver or Xinerama, I'm your man.
If it's something about input drivers, for instance, I wouldn't
dare commit it because I don't know enough about it or how it fits
into the big picture.  You need to have points of contact for
various parts of the tree.  This is roughly the Linux kernel's
model at least as far as knowing who to send patches to and who
reviews them.

   So a point I'm trying to make is that you can have 100 people
with commit access and if nobody there knows anything about
input drivers, an input patch may still sit in the patch queue without
getting committed.  That's why I think the maintainer model is a
good one.

   I don't think all of the patches funnel through Linus.  If
they do, then that's not much different than the way things are
with XFree86 now, with most patches funneling through David.


			Mark.