X.Org Foundation Issues Hasty CFP For XDC2012

[curaga]

But you'll notice there's no coverage of the EVoC students getting their midpoint payments on time nor what Stuart had to put up with to make that happen.

Stop teasing and give the URL already to where this _is_ covered then

[marcoz]

Hey mr armchair quarterback.

Michael does a lot to inform the general people about many things. If it just happens that the X.org foundation, as it is today, responds slowly and misses quite a few things, then is michael not allowed to inform people about that?

Please explain to me how you got 'not allowed to inform' out of my posts? This is Luc right? C'mon man, I'm trying to help the project. Look at my history on the ML and commit logs.

Depressingly, you reinforce my point. That's pretty much ALL Michael does; point out the misteps and mistakes. There's ~50? people doing the work of what should be probably several hundred. Have you seen the mailing lists? These guys are machines! But there's still stressingly few of them. Mistakes are guaranteed to happen. When I complain that maybe MIcheal is a little too giddy over giving negative coverage of X.Org, you reply with '...not allowed to inform...' ? To me that seems a pretty big stretch.


There are so many stories and articles that MIchael _could_ write about X.Org happenings that would be really cool and interesting and motivating to read, but instead he focuses on getting something out as quick as possible, especially if it's negative (to drive page hits and therefore ad revenue I'm guessing).

Also. Michael did actually organize an XDC himself, in case you forgot, and has been very directly involved with some of the boards mismanagements regarding communication and payment.

I didn't forget phoronix's sponsoring of XDC2011. It was in Chicago last year and I was there. Props to Michael for doing that.

But you'll notice there's no coverage of the EVoC students getting their midpoint payments on time nor what Stuart had to put up with to make that happen.

[marcoz]

No offence taken =) I didn't intend to stir anyone up, just merely reinforced an observation us plebs have. The PR side of things I guess. And we all know too well that doesn't always relate to reality of a situation (prime example, nVidia). It's interesting to hear the plight of the organisation. It does begger the question however, have X.Orger's posted here previously of their situatation regarding lack of help? I've only really only started recently with reading the forums (after reading them years ago, they were pretty fiery and not my cup of earl grey, black!) so personally, I'm just asking. It's interesting to note that even paid for pistitions with Red Hat, and even Canonical, can't be filled.

I normally don't get stirred up but I find X.Org has turned into everyone's easy punching bag and I don't like it; perhaps that's made me a bit over-sensitive.
Everyone on X is aware of that observation. It's hard not to be aware when every forum and every LUG (that I've ever been to) reiterates it.

X.Org gets very little PR and very little of that is positive. If we had a PR person that would probably help, but that goes back to noone wants to get involved. I've tried to help in this regard (PR) but I'm not good at it.

I've seen a few X.Org folks post here but I don't know how often that is nor what all they've posted in the past. Personally, I know I've emailed phoronix 3 times with news or something that might be of interest (including this CFP) and each time, after I see the result, I just shake my head. You'd think after the second time I would have learned. I guess I'm hopelessly optimistic... or stupid. I'm leaning towards the latter. If the others have had similar experiences, I could see them just staying away. Obviously, I can't, nor would I, speak for them.

I have only seen a couple fiery threads. The X.Org guys are, for the most part, pretty laid back, easy going and fun to hang out with. Are you referring to the XFre86 days? X.Org and XFree86, from everything I know and have learned, are night and day different in this regard.

If you are able, I highly recommend you come to XDC. You'll learn more about X and the people involved than you ever will otherwise. We can go out for beers and I'll buy the first round.

[stiiixy]

Motivating who?!?!? Take a look at the number of people involved in, and working on, X.Org and the rest of the graphics stack. Seriously! WHO!?!?! There is a depressingly small number of people doing all the work on this very important project and these people are seriously spread thin. I've never talked with or heard of anyone who's been motivated by anything from phoronix. How the hell is "Those idiots at X have once again managed to show everyone how lazy and disorganized they are" supposed to be motivating?

Hell, I'm told RedHat and Canonical are looking for people to work on X stuff and they can't find them. These are PAID positions and they can't fill them.

Noone wants to do the work or even help, even it's it paid. They'd much rather have blogs and blog post where they can complain and feel smug.

This isn't directed at you. Just a frustration I have.

And yes, I know phoronix is all about any kind of controversy so it can get more page hits and advertising money. Up until now I've avoided feeding the troll, but this time was too much. Yes, I made some mistakes but at least I am trying to help the project and am honestly contributing. I did the CFP because I was trying to help. I spend time trying looking into how to do something (a CFP) and trying to help a project and Michael craps on my work, never contacts me about it even though I sent him the email about the CFP 10 minute after I posted it, and gets page hits (advertizing dollars) off of it. Yea, you're a real standup guy Michael.

No offence taken =) I didn't intend to stir anyone up, just merely reinforced an observation us plebs have. The PR side of things I guess. And we all know too well that doesn't always relate to reality of a situation (prime example, nVidia). It's interesting to hear the plight of the organisation. It does begger the question however, have X.Orger's posted here previously of their situatation regarding lack of help? I've only really only started recently with reading the forums (after reading them years ago, they were pretty fiery and not my cup of earl grey, black!) so personally, I'm just asking. It's interesting to note that even paid for pistitions with Red Hat, and even Canonical, can't be filled.

[smitty3268]

I feel he's correct about the X.org foundation, not just trying to get more page views. They could fairly easily re-set up their old funding models and hire a fulltime person for managing it.

Having someone dedicated to pushing X would certainly change things a bit.

Oh, i agree that Michael's criticisms are 100% accurate in this case. I just think the copy/paste nature of these articles constantly coming out says something about the intentions behind them, and i don't think it's necessarily that he thinks X.Org will fix anything.

[libv]

Hey mr armchair quarterback.

Michael does a lot to inform the general people about many things. If it just happens that the X.org foundation, as it is today, responds slowly and misses quite a few things, then is michael not allowed to inform people about that?

Also. Michael did actually organize an XDC himself, in case you forgot, and has been very directly involved with some of the boards mismanagements regarding communication and payment.

[marcoz]

Only if they're of Deutsche-origin. As was said above, there does seem to be an overwhelming amount negative coverage on Phoronix about X.Org, based on the feeds. As an impartial reader, that's looks about right. Speculatively, it looks as if Michael's expecting his posts to aid in motivating someone to do something

Motivating who?!?!? Take a look at the number of people involved in, and working on, X.Org and the rest of the graphics stack. Seriously! WHO!?!?! There is a depressingly small number of people doing all the work on this very important project and these people are seriously spread thin. I've never talked with or heard of anyone who's been motivated by anything from phoronix. How the hell is "Those idiots at X have once again managed to show everyone how lazy and disorganized they are" supposed to be motivating?

Hell, I'm told RedHat and Canonical are looking for people to work on X stuff and they can't find them. These are PAID positions and they can't fill them.

Noone wants to do the work or even help, even it's it paid. They'd much rather have blogs and blog post where they can complain and feel smug.

This isn't directed at you. Just a frustration I have.

And yes, I know phoronix is all about any kind of controversy so it can get more page hits and advertising money. Up until now I've avoided feeding the troll, but this time was too much. Yes, I made some mistakes but at least I am trying to help the project and am honestly contributing. I did the CFP because I was trying to help. I spend time trying looking into how to do something (a CFP) and trying to help a project and Michael craps on my work, never contacts me about it even though I sent him the email about the CFP 10 minute after I posted it, and gets page hits (advertizing dollars) off of it. Yea, you're a real standup guy Michael.

[marcoz]

armchair quarterbacks

well, the first serious talk should be about getting the organisation back on track. appoint a few new persons for pr and finance.

What new persons? There are no PR or finance persons. There's very few people workin in X.Org and a good chunk of those are volunteers who try to make time to do stuff.

You know what we get for our efforts? People taking shots as us in forums like this and in LUGs. A bunch of armchair quarterbacks.

Noone wants to help; everyone instead wants to just talk about the problems in X.

Especially here. Michael, you are more interested in getting page hits via flames than anything else. The 'research' you do for the negative stories is 10x what you do for anything positive. Example: Even that email I sent you last year regarding one of the GSoC students. I talked to the student, did some basic intro stuff for you, all you had to do was contact the student and chat with him. You didn't even bother contacting him. You took my email and basically posted it, within a couple hours of me sending it. I don't think you could have been handed an easier story; and it would have been interesting too because there was some meat there. You couldn't even be bothered to do that.

[curaga]

I feel he's correct about the X.org foundation, not just trying to get more page views. They could fairly easily re-set up their old funding models and hire a fulltime person for managing it.

Having someone dedicated to pushing X would certainly change things a bit.

[smitty3268]

Only if they're of Deutsche-origin. As was said above, there does seem to be an overwhelming amount negative coverage on Phoronix about X.Org, based on the feeds. As an impartial reader, that's looks about right. Speculatively, it looks as if Michael's expecting his posts to aid in motivating someone to do something

Eh, more likely he just wants to try and stir up controversy to encourage more posts in the forum. He posts at least 1 article a week designed simply to start flamewars, so that's consistent with his MO.