Beryl and Compiz: back together again?

Once upon a time, just over one year ago, the Compiz window manager hit the net. Compiz, which features fancy 3D effects, was the result of some months' worth of behind-closed-doors work at Novell. There was an enthusiastic reception, and others began to hack on the code. It didn't take long, however, before some of those others found that it was hard to get their changes back into the Compiz mainline. Eventually one of those developers, Quinn Storm, got tired of carrying an increasing collection of external patches. The result was a fork, and the Beryl project was created.

These events can be acrimonious, and the Compiz/Beryl fork was no exception. Beryl developers complained that Compiz was run as a Novell fiefdom which was uninterested in patches from the outside. On the Compiz side, Beryl's decision to relicense the code from the MIT license to the GPL meant that code could flow from Compiz to Beryl, but not in the other direction. In early 2007, a Compiz site administrator vandalized Beryl's site, an act which must surely mark a low point in relations between the two projects.

During this time, development on both sides continued, with Beryl quickly developing a reputation for bells, whistles, and an unbelievable number of configuration options. Compiz took a more conservative course, working on getting the core functionality working in a way which seemed, to its core developers, to be right. Despite all of this, the differences between the two code bases are apparently less than one might think. No major architectural change have happened; instead, most of Beryl's additions come in the form of plugins.

Recently, though, the Beryl developers started to ponder some more sweeping changes. According to Robert Carr, the conversation went like this:

The result was that the two projects started talking again. As of this writing, it would appear that Beryl and Compiz have come to an agreement to end the fork and join back into a single project. Should things happen this way, the results for eye-candy fans should be good. There are a few details which need to be worked out first, though.

One of those is licensing. The fact that Beryl's work is licensed under the GPL means that, for the two projects to merge, one of them must be relicensed. It looks like Beryl will be the one to give here, moving its core back to the MIT license. The number of contributors is evidently sufficiently small that this sort of change is still feasible.

Then there is the issue of how to merge the changes in the code. According to Mr. Carr, agreement has been reached on most points, at least with regard to the core changes. In the past, Compiz leader David Reveman has not been receptive to Beryl code:

It seems that the situation is different now:

The merge is probably helped by the Compiz project's plan to split the code into "core" and "extra" modules. Much of what is currently in Beryl will, it seems, slip into compiz-extra with little trouble.

So if licensing and code are not problems, what are the potential sticking points in this merger? It seems that there are two of them: naming and leadership. The Beryl side is pushing for a new name and structure which would enable a clean start for the entire project. Without that, they fear, one side or the other will probably get the short end of the stick. Mr. Reveman responds:

From reading the discussion, one gets the sense that the leadership issues have not yet been the subject of serious discussion. Some sort of project management model will have to be worked out, or the newly merged project will run a risk of falling victim to the same tensions and forking again.

There should be an answer, though. It would be a sad day if these two projects could come together, resolve their technical and licensing differences, then drop the whole thing because they cannot agree on the name. Some great progress has been made on reunifying one of the most unpleasant forks in our community; it seems like the remaining issues must somehow be amenable to a solution.

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