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+''Converted to wiki form from original report at http://foundation.x.org/pipermail/members/2013-February/000716.html ''

+

+

+= The State of The X.Org Foundation 2013 =

+

+Bart Massey

+

+Secretary, [[XorgFoundation|X.Org Foundation]]

+

+February 22, 2013

+

+

+''Abstract:'' 2012 has been a year of proceeding apace for the

+X.Org Foundation.  Key administrative milestones have been

+reached, and some new initiatives have begun.

+

+''Note:'' The Bylaws of the X.Org Foundation require the

+Secretary to prepare and deliver a State of the Organization

+report within 60 days of the start of the calendar year.  It

+is my pleasure to discharge that responsibility by preparing

+this report.  While I have prepared this report in close

+consultation with the X.Org Foundation Board of Directors,

+all views contained herein are ultimately my own.

+

+

+== Introduction ==

+

+Nine years ago, the X.Org Foundation was re-formed and its

+first officers elected.  Since then, approximately one X

+Window System major release has occurred per year.  The

+mission of the modern X.Org Foundation Board is to support

+this work: through raising and allocation of funds;

+through recruitment and support of Foundation members;

+through initiatives in community development, education,

+and support; and by providing a computing and

+communications infrastructure. In short, the mission of

+the Foundation is "to develop and execute effective

+strategies that provide worldwide stewardship of the X

+Window System technology and standards." [ [[http://www.x.org/wiki/XorgFoundation|1]] ]

+

+In the next two sections of this report, I first review

+X.Org Foundation activities during 2012, and report on our

+successes and challenges; I then suggest something of the

+goals, needs, and plans for the future of the X.Org

+Foundation in 2013 and beyond.  Finally, I draw some

+conclusions.

+

+== X.Org Foundation 2012 ==

+

+In 2012 X.Org development proceeded at a steady and

+reasonable pace.  Several new things have happened

+that are worth noting.

+

+=== Development ===

+

+In keeping with the X.Org goal of about one release per

+year, Release 7.7 of the X Window System occurred 6 June

+2012. Release 7.6 was about 1.5 years earlier, in

+December 2010. However, there is some feeling among the

+developer community that the "katamari" point releases

+of all of X are no longer terribly useful, yet are a big

+consumer of developer resources. Thus, it is likely that

+these releases will be farther apart in the future, or

+will cease altogether--not because development pace is

+decreasing, but because point releases of individual

+components are a better mechanism in the "new" world of

+modularized X development.

+

+Release 7.7 featured multitouch support, improvements to

+the Xinput extension, reorganized and modernized release

+documentation, fence objects for sync, pointer barriers

+for multihead, partial support for GLX and XKB in XCB,

+and the usual wide range of video and input driver

+enhancements.

+

+The Wayland project gained some momentum in 2012. The

+Board has agreed that supporting Wayland, Mesa, and

+other affiliated X.Org projects is a high priority. Some

+envision a Wayland-based future for open source

+graphical infrastructure; the Board's role is to ensure

+that open source graphical environments have a healthy

+future, whatever technical direction the community

+chooses to pursue.

+

+=== Funded Activities ===

+

+For the last few years, the premiere event hosted by the

+X.Org Foundation has been the annual X.Org Developers

+Symposium / Conference. In 2012, the Board voted to make

+the name X.Org Developers Conference (XDC) the official

+name for this event, regardless of where it is

+located. There has been a tradition of alternating

+between the US and elsewhere for travel reasons;

+this is not a hard-and-fast rule, the Board has agreed

+that it may be violated in the event that there is a

+particularly good opportunity in one place or another.

+

+XDC 2012 took place 19-21 September in Nuremberg

+Germany. Important topics for XDC 2012 included

+modernization of X for newer graphics and input hardware

+and newer UX models, as well as discussion around

+Wayland. XDC 2013 is planned to be held in Portland,

+Oregon USA in late summer.

+

+X.Org applied to Google Summer of Code for 2012, but was

+not invited to participate. The reason given by Google

+was lack of quality of the student-facing "ideas page".

+The Board has not yet made a decision as to whether to

+apply for Summer of Code in 2013.

+

+The X.Org Endless Vacation of Code (EVoC) was

+established in 2009 to provide opportunities similar to

+Google Summer of Code to selected students on an ad hoc

+calendar. Over the last couple of years, the Board has

+had three successfully-completed EVoC projects. The

+number of applicants to EVoC continues to grow, and the

+program appears to be doing its job of attracting

+students to become serious X developers.

+

+A couple of Book Sprints were held in 2012 to produce

+new developer documentation, with the hope of making it

+easier to get started in X development. The first Book

+Sprint, in March, was a "virtual" online event that

+produced an "X.Org New Developer Guide" that has not

+been officially released yet due to lack of final

+editing, but which is a good summary document.  The

+second Book Sprint, held in September at XDC, was work

+on a device drivers and graphics hardware guide, based

+largely on a document by Stéphane Marchesin. This book

+is currently farther from completion. The small

+participation in the Book Sprints was a serious problem:

+it is unlikely that future ones will be attempted unless

+bigger participation can be assured.

+

+=== Foundation Activities ===

+

+The Board finally completed all aspects of the

+transition of the X.Org Foundation from a US LLC to a US

+501(c)3 Educational Non-Profit Foundation in 2012.  This

+was a huge effort over many years; we are extremely

+grateful to the Software Freedom Law Center for making

+this transition possible, and to those Board Members who

+took on the hard work on our end.

+

+The X.Org Foundation became a member of the Open

+Invention Network (OIN) in 2012. OIN "is an intellectual

+property company that was formed to promote the Linux

+system by using patents to create a collaborative

+ecosystem." 

+[ [[http://www.openinventionnetwork.com|2]] ]

+While X.Org holds no patents that could

+be contributed to OIN, the Board was approached by OIN

+leadership due to the large amount of "prior art"

+embodied in the X Window System.

+

+The 2012 X.Org Foundation Board election was completed

+in January 2012.  There is little to report: the new

+Board, like the old, is strong, and its Members are all

+sharing in the work of the Foundation.

+

+Membership in the Foundation is currently at about 72

+active members, down from about twice that number two

+years ago. The decline is largely due to folks leaving

+that are no longer active in X: this is actually

+deliberate and somewhat positive, as it makes it easier

+to get quorum in elections. However, the continuing work

+on encouraging current X.Org participants to join the

+Foundation is now even more important. Membership is

+free, easy to apply for, entails few responsibilities,

+and has minor benefits in terms of access to

+documentation not available to the public; anyone who is

+participating in the development of X in some way is

+highly encouraged to sign up.

+

+=== 2013 And Beyond ===

+

+No substantial work was done in 2011-2012 in finding

+recurring sponsors for X.Org. The current funding

+situation is such that we need to make a more serious

+funding effort this year. Several folks in the community

+have pointed to a lack of a mechanism for crowdsourced X

+funding: we are currently exploring alternatives in this

+direction, since the US IRS requires that 10% of our fund

+come from individual donations to X.Org each year.

+

+The heavily-hacked legacy members.x.org PHP codebase is

+well past due for replacement.  In addition, the X.Org

+wiki has been subject to spamming and become increasingly

+unreliable. Joint efforts with freedesktop.org to improve

+or replace all of this infrastructure have begun.

+

+X.Org has needed to change banks for years for various

+reasons; the ongoing issues of the 501(c)3 transition have

+kept us from proceeding. Hopefully, we can get there this

+year.

+

+The Board has voted to commission a new X.Org logo, and to

+trademark that logo once it has been designed. This will

+give us a more attractive and usable mark, and will

+protect the new mark from abuse.

+

+There are discussions underway among the Board about

+proposed amendments to the Bylaws of the X.Org Foundation.

+These changes are partly a response to US IRS 501(c)3

+requirements, and partly due to normal changes in the

+operation of X.Org.  While it is still early to know what

+will be proposed here, and when, it is possible that some

+of this will happen during 2013.

+

+=== Conclusion ===

+

+The state of the X.Org Foundation is strong.  The X Window

+System continues to be the go-to graphical infrastructure

+for Open Source desktops.

+

+Building on previous prognostications, I quite confidently

+predict that 2013 will be the Year of Mobile Wayland. I'm

+looking forward to it.