Apple Looks To Take Over X Server 1.9 Release Management

With yesterday's successful release of X.Org Server 1.9 on time by Intel's Keith Packard, most of the developers will now begin working towards X.Org Server 1.10. Like the past few X.Org Server releases, Keith Packard will go on to continue being the release manager for this new series. In the past there's been the input-expert Peter Hutterer of Red Hat to handle the stable release management duties for the point releases, but he will not be handling it for the 1.9.x series and it looks like Apple may be taking over.

Peter Hutterer has done a splendid managing the stable point releases in the past (heck, he did seven releases for the 1.7 series) of good quality and delivering them on time, while at the same time continuing to do development work on Multi-Pointer X and X Input 2. However, Peter will not be managing the xorg-server 1.9 branch as he is preoccupied working on more input changes for the X.Org Server.

Keith Packard put a call out for anyone interested in serving as Peter's replacement to cut the xorg-server 1.9.x releases and it looks like it will be Jeremy Huddleston, Apple's main X.Org contributor. No one else has volunteered to take on these stable release management roles. Apple doesn't even use the entire X.Org stack like the DDX drivers in their software on Mac OS X, but they are looking to re-base XQuartz on X.Org Server 1.9, so they a vested interest in managing this branch.

Up to this point they have based XQuartz upon the old X.Org Server 1.4, but they are now looking to upgrade to xorg-server 1.9 as their next long-term support, presumably it's going into Mac OS X 10.7. For those unfamiliar with the setup of the graphics stack on Apple's Mac OS X, XQuartz is their open-source effort to support the X.Org X Window System so that you can easily run X applications on Mac OS X. It's been apart of their operating system since Mac OS X 10.5. There's also more details about XQuartz on the MacOSForge Trac.

Due to XQuartz not utilizing the X.Org hardware drivers, Jeremy Huddleston is looking for a second developer to take over patch maintenance in that area and will be more dependent upon other developers to nominate patches they would like in the X.Org Server 1.9.x point releases, but it looks like this Apple developer will be taking up Peter's previous position. Confirmation of this can be found on the xorg-devel mailing list.

The first point release, X.Org Server 1.9.1, is expected to be out around the same time as the X.Org 7.6 katamari release in October.