Open Group spawns X.Org

Branden Robinson writes "The Open Group has created a new sub-organization, X.Org, to hold stewardship of the X Window System. X.Org will be a membership organization similar to the old I2O group, with open membership but voting restricted to paying members, and rules for expulsion of members. Check out their site and this NewsAlert story for more. "

TOG is not very open

[Anonymous Coward]

These "open group" guys are not very open. Has
anyone else ever tried to use the DCE 1.2 code?
The do provide a download of the source code
but it almost impossible to compile? I tried for
6 hours and gave up after fixing at least 100
bugs in the overly complex build process.
They also do not let people give away compiled
versions of the code so that you will be forced
to buy a copy of the precompiled code they sell.

The Open Group. Bleh.

[Anonymous Coward]

These people inflicted Motif and CDE on us. I was hoping they'd keep that silly licensing issue the way it was so that the world would realize just how much they sucked and contribute to XF86 instead.

Maybe the world just just realize how much they suck and contribute to XF86 instead.

Closed Development Model

[Jordy]

I see, instead of using an open development model X-Windows is run by a bunch of companies who all have their hands in Microsoft's pockets (for the most part that is).

While Linux and alike champion open source software, I feel it is equally important to work in an open environment instead of this silly closed development model X-Windows has taken.
Sure, you can modify window managers which sit ontop of X, or toolkits which applications use... but just try adding new features to X itself and see how well it goes or modifying existing features in X (that would break standards that is).

And don't give me that, "you can add it to xfree86" crap :) PC's running Linux or *BSD* aren't the only machines on the planet running X.

Of course, I'm slightly biased on this topic :)

--

Re:Didn't see any members...

[J. J. Ramsey]

> >don't have a pdf reader available...)

Do you have 'gv'? It's primariliy a Postscript viewer but can read PDF as well. You'd have to download the PDF file of course.

Re:Closed Development Model

[pb]

This sounds like another reason to run a Unix clone instead of actual Unix... :)

I'd love to have Unix commands under NT, and I've used (half-assed) packages that tried to do that, but unfortunately, my next questions are "why is this so slow", "why are these files so big", etc, etc. It's about as pretty as Unix on top of VMS (and scarily related), (or like running all your Unix commands in DOS, with DOS extenders in the binaries, except slower...) and it reaffirms my commitment in Linux.

Also, isn't X probably one of the *only* "successful consortium developed open standards-based technologies"? Especially when you consider what the "Open Group" must consider an open standard... (or is that Open standard? Maybe it just means that they made it... hmm.)

Old property

[Misagon]

It isn't new. The Open Group has owned the domain name for some time.

source code contributors as voting members?

[Andy Tai]

In light of the Open Source/Free Software movement, maybe there should be a way for people who contribute source code (rather than paying money) to be voting members. This way non-profit entities like the XFree86 group can get involved without worrying about coming up with the funds.

Re:Closed Development Model

[Erik Corry]

companies who all have their hands in Microsoft's pockets

I'm sure there are lots of companies who would like to have their hands in MS's pockets, but I don't think anyone does.

Compaq, HP and Sun are hardly MS minions. This just looks like paranoia to me.

And don't give me that, "you can add it to xfree86" crap :) PC's running Linux or *BSD* aren't the only machines on the planet running X.

Xfree86 doesn't just run on PCs, and it doesn't just run on Linux and *bsd*. It should be possible to port it to anything Berlin can be ported to and probably more.

As far as I can see what this all means is that TOG [opengroup.org] have admitted they are not the right group to run X, so they have made a new organisation for the purpose. It might work better, it might not, but it seems like a good move. And if it fails, the magic of an Open Source license coupled with the strength of Xfree86 [xfree86.org] will help us keep going.

... hands in Microsoft's pockets?!!??

[LizardKing]

Shurely shome mishtake.
Chris Wareham

Reserved domain names?

[timotten]

I thought that IANA reserved all the one-letter second-level domains under .com, .net, and .org. Whois seems to verify this for all the other one-letter domains... Why's the Open Group getting special treatment?

Re:X.org, and The Open Group...

[jlv]

Interesting to note is that all the engineers from The X Consortium have now been gone for almost a year, as TOG gets around to "doing something" with X.

My last month at TOG was working on the X Project Team. It gives me an interesting point of view, as AFAIR the new license was being driven by the corporate sponsors of the XPT (most of those companies you mention above), because they felt they were paying the development costs so that other companies (i.e. Linux distributors like RedHat) could "ride for free".

Too bad TOG melted down and disvolved the last part of OSF when they did, as a source release of Motif was in the works at the time!

x.org "from the old days"

[jlv]

Sheesh. Anyone thinking TOG is getting special treatment WRT x.org is just dating themselves as "Internet newbies". x.org belonged to the X Consortium right from when it spun out from MIT. That's nearly 10 years by now. The 1997 date reported by whois is only the time the record was created as belonging to TOG.

And, long before "The Slashdot Effect", the Internet trembled at whims of "The X Effect", which took place whenever a new release of X was made. It generally caused no end of routing havoc as links were saturated with X tar balls for days on end.

Re:single-letter domains?

[EJB]

No so weird. x.org was registered before it was policy not to give out single-letter domains.
...Back in the days there were plenty of good domain names...

And they've been paying their bill for the domain every since.

single-letter domains?

[cswiii]

this is new.... and really the only one I found...every other $char.dom I checked was marked as a reserved domain...wierd....

Re:Closed Development Model

[cjs]

And don't give me that, "you can add it to xfree86" crap :) PC's running Linux or *BSD* aren't the only machines on the planet running X.

No, they're not: you're quite right about that. There would also be sparc workstations running BSD, Alphas running BSD, Sun 3s, Amigas, Ataris, and various other m68k boxes running BSD, Pmaxen and other MIPS boxes running BSD, ARM32 machines running BSD....and all running XFree86.

NetBSD runs a ton of platfroms under XFree86.

cjs

X.org, and The Open Group...

[jg]

I've been only slightly involved with this.
Comments below are my personal opinion, and
are do not reflect either Compaq's or X.org's
position.

Several things of note:

1) the traditional UNIX vendors have not been
happy with The Open Group's stewardship of X;
this is mostly extricating X from TOG's grasp.
Shall we say that the copyright change TOG did last year upset them as much as anyone in the Linux community?

2) Current members are listed at: http://www.x.org/current_members.htm.

It includes: Compaq, HP, Hummingbird, IBM, SGI,
Sun, Astek, Attachmate, Barko, Jupiter Systems,
MetroLink, MITre, Peritek, Sequent, Shiman, Siemens, Starnet, WRQ, Xi Graphics.

3) I think the X Consortium registered X.org
before there were any restrictions on name length.

If you are interested in the future of X and
attending Linux Expo, you may want to attend the
BOF Thursday evening...

- Jim Gettys

Didn't see any members...

[Wee]

Doesn't look like they have any members yet. It would have been cool to see a list of entities they've signed up. I mean, I could start an organization with a high-brow mission statement, but that wouldn't mean that anyone should necessarily pay attention to it.

I wonder if they'll sign anyone. (I also wonder where the money goes, but don't have a pdf reader available...)

-B

Uh...not quite :)

[wesmills]

> 3) I think the X Consortium registered X.org > before there were any restrictions on name length. Actually, according to ye olde whois [freewhois.com]:

Registrant:
The Open Group ( X57-DOM [freewhois.com])
Apex Plaza, Forbury Road
Reading, Berks RG1 1AX
UNITED KINGDOM

Record last updated on 01-Mar-99.
Record created on 18-Jan-97.

According to all the other single letter domains, they were registered in 1993.. So, the original question stands, why do these guys get special treatment?

#(!*$&%)@)@#(! politics...

much older

[garyrich]

In '91 I recall x.org as being an
"old and established" domain. It
was always used as "the 3 letter ping target"
that we used to test that a network
could talk to the world.

Based on my old Xlib programming manual
that I have on the shelf it was probably
registered ~1988. Before I was hacking X.

garyr

your web browser is Ronald Reagan - Neil Stephenson

Re:Closed Development Model

[Melbert]

I can run, display, create, and compile X applications on Windows NT, using Interix. A few weeks ago I even telnetted into my NT box from my Linux box and ran the 'Xlogo' client and a few other of the prepackaged X apps on the NT box and displayed them on the Linux boxes X server. Interix comes bundled with Hummingbird's X server for Windows, and (the standard version, not the lite) also includes Motif. The X Window system is definitely not GPL'd. Also, (and this may prove very eye opening to many Linux users) Interix, running on top of the NT kernel simultaneously on the same machine with Win16, Win32 and OS/2 apps, is a real branded version of Unix. Not an unofficial 'clone' OS like Linux (which can't legally be referred to as Unix for that reason)

It was bloody expensive compared to Linux, though.

Re:Didn't see any members... oh yes there are

[rayktrz]

executive listed as:
Compaq, HP, hummingbird, IBM, SGI, SUN

premier members:
ASTEC, ATTACHMATE, Barco, JupiterSystems, Mitre, peritek,Sequent, Shiman Assoc, Siemens, starnet, WRQ,Xi Graphics

associate members:
i admit there wer none listed