That "vision" thang...

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Mats Lidell writes:
 > >>>>> Stephen wrote:
 > 
 > Stephen> I don't understand why you think we need to wait.  
 > 
 > Well, I just think that going GPLv3 is a rather big transition
 > mentally so it would be nice to have that in a new version so that it
 > would stick out.

I'd rather it *not* stick out. :-)  It really doesn't make any
difference except to us developers.  We don't backport existing
features to 21.4, so all we need to do is make sure that contributors
of bugfix patches to 21.5 also give us permission to use them in GPLv2
21.4 if we think that's appropriate.  In fact, I think what we should
do is have an announced policy that *all* patches to XEmacs will be
presumed to have a "GPLv2 or later" license, unless the contributor
wishes to explicitly specify otherwise.  That way we can use them
anywhere in XEmacs code.

 > I also think that we should strive at a faster release schedule
 > ... you know Release Early, Release Often.
 > 
 > So in my mind these two go hand in hand. By getting 21.5 out fast we
 > actually doesn't have to wait long since GPLv3 is the next step after
 > that. ;-)

I'm not sure that releasing 21.5, then 24 hours later releasing 21.6
under GPL v3, is going to be good publicity. :-/

 > If a release of 21.5 is considered a bad idea but going GPLv3 is
 > accepted I'd start immediately with it of course.

I think releasing 21.5 "as-is" would simply give XEmacs a reputation
for releasing crappy software.  It's going to take longer to get 21.5
released than it is to get GPLv3 set up (if somebody will just start
the work on GPLv3).

 > applications that do work on multiple platforms, obvious examples are
 > the numerous java applications, and an assumption that they were easier
 > to get going on all supported platforms.

XEmacs is not analogous to a Java app.  XEmacs is analogous to a Java
Development Environment.

 > Stephen> 1.  straightfoward configuration of Xft fonts from resources or Lisp
 > Stephen>     (unification to Lisp only can come later; we really should provide
 > Stephen>     an X-resource-file-to-Lisp translator),
 > Stephen> 2.  general improvement of face and other customization,
 > Stephen> 3.  Xft font turds,
 > Stephen> 4.  fix window configuration management (VM at least suffers horribly), and
 > Stephen> 5.  SUMO-in-source distribution (at least a simple version).
 > 
 > How would you order these if you take going GPLv3 and general
 > GNU-Emacs sync in consideration?

GPLv3 and GNU sync are not necessary to a release.  If people work on
GPLv3 in parallel with the technical problems, we can release as
GPLv3.  If not, we don't have to.

General GNU Emacs sync is an ideal I aim at, not a concrete goal I
expect to ever achieve.  That can go on in parallel with other
development as soon as we have a GPLv3 tree.