Question about the future of Xorg

[gene heskett]

On 7/5/25 01:32, Vladimir Dergachev wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Jul 2025, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 24, 2025 at 1:23 AM Michel Dänzer <michel at daenzer.net> 
>> wrote:
>>> On 2025-06-11 03:53, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>>>> On Tue, Jun 10, 2025 at 1:11 AM Carsten Haitzler
>>>> <raster at rasterman.com> wrote:
>>>> Well the way it used to work back in the 80's and 90's is ... this
>>>> is where you stop waiting for someone else to do it and get up and
>>>> do it yourself.
>>>>
>>>> Of course, and that's what I've done with multiple projects. But
>>>> then political nonsense kicks in and meritocracy is thrown out the
>>>> window. Maintainers end up believing they are my boss and are
>>>> entitled to my free time.
>>>
>>> Let me point out you're doing something similar here: You're 
>>> expecting current members of the xserver project to commit to 
>>> *maintaining and developing Xorg indefinitely*.
>>
>> No, I'm not. Asking a question doesn't entail any expectation.
>>
>> If I ask you "can you please pass the guacamole?" and you reply "no",
>> I'll just grab it myself.
>>
>>> Multiple project members are keeping the lights on for Xorg.
>>
>> Are they? I'm pretty sure I can grab a release from 2015 and it'll
>> work just fine.
>>
>> But that's precisely the question that I'm asking: "are you keeping
>> the lights on?". *Nobody* is answering.
>>
>> I would like that to be the case, because I have told many Wayland
>> advocates that there's multiple Xorg developers committed to the
>> project, because I assumed if there are users, there must be
>> developers. Apparently I was wrong, and the only developer that cared
>> about the future of Xorg was permanently banned with no reason given.
>
> Let's change the language, shall we?
>
> There are many developers having fun with Xorg. Some on the list, some 
> not, some will reply to you, some not.
>
> There might be some that are employed to work on Xorg. In USA that 
> usually means two weeks notice, so that is the total extent of the 
> "commitment".
> If they have to switch to a new job it will likely displace any open 
> source contributions for at least a month.
>
> People having fun produce good code. Don't mess with it.
>
> best
>
> Vladimir Dergachev
Rant on:

And this, Vladimir, is the clearest, most concise description of the 
problem I have seen.  My path thru life has been that of keeping a 
television station on the air and profitable. Along that line I have 
coded up a couple projects on "company" time. Projects the station 
needed but no one sold. So I bought the hardware and wrote the code.  
Then sold them the hardware.   Code that turned out to so handy it was 
used for decades. That is/was unheard of, control room hardware gets 
replaced by competitive pressure or mechanical wear out years before the 
tax write off is complete. TV news people are hell on hardware, but get 
the story regardless. But as quick as I could get the parts, they got 
the busted ($7500 to repair) camera back to go wreck them again. Now I'm 
90 and 23 years retired and it would take me the rest of my life to wrap 
my head around a quarter of the code xorg maintains. With the level of 
thanks I see here, its no wonder xorg is falling behind. Wayland will 
never catch up with the no-root allowed mentality that accompanies it. 
And that limitation will continue until such time as I can run 'sudo 
synaptic' from a shell, give my user pw and proceed with a gui tool that 
actually works, without wayland being I won't allow it snotty as hell. 
Those projects that have resorted to monthly donations to keep the 
lights on are doing amazingly well, and despite the limitations of a 
fixed income, I do monetarily support 2 of them on a monthly basis. The 
rest go out of their way to make such donations difficult to do, or get 
bamboozled into some 50% off the top swindle as the middleman, so stop 
it. Good code is worth paying for.

rant off:

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.

-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
  - Louis D. Brandeis