Compiz/Beryl merger is official [LWN.net]

From:		Jeffrey Laramie <imnotpc-AT-ubaight.com>
To:		"compiz list" <compiz-AT-lists.freedesktop.org>
Subject:		Compiz and Beryl are Reuniting
Date:		Wed, 4 Apr 2007 19:52:52 -0400
Archive-link:		Article, Thread

After several weeks of discussion the leaders of Compiz and Beryl have agreed 
that the two communities shall reunite. This decision is supported by both 
David and Quinn and represents the majority decision of the administrators 
and developers in each community. At this early stage not a lot has been 
decided, but these are the main points of the agreement:

- As had previously been decided, Compiz will effectively split in to two 
divisions: Compiz-core and Compiz-extra.

- The Compiz-Core division will continue in the form described here 
http://forum.go-compiz.org/viewtopic.php?t=677. The name of the package will 
remain compiz.

- The Compiz-Extra division (what we think of as Compiz) will merge with the 
Beryl project to form a new community with the temporary name of "Composite 
Community".

- The codebase of the new community will consist of the best plugins, 
decorators, settings tools and related applications from the Beryl and Compiz 
communities. We will create a code review panel consisting of the best 
developers from each community who will see that any code included in a 
release package meets the highest standards and is suitable for distribution 
in an officially supported package. Support for existing packages will be 
continued at least until the first stable release of the new project.

- The websites of each community will remain up and running until a new, user 
oriented site is completed. Since the forums are the heart of each community, 
they will be merged first. Once we have a single community forum we can use 
it to discuss the additional details, including the name of the new project, 
as well as setting the goals for the first release.

Congratulations to everyone who has worked to reunite the communities. Well 
done!

Jeff

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Compiz/Beryl merger is official

Posted Apr 9, 2007 19:03 UTC (Mon) by Zenith (subscriber, #24899) [Link]

A shame? How so?

I don't think you understand what this means. They will combine the best of both projects, including the user-based communities, and as such, you will get the benefits of both projects.

How can this be a bad thing?

And as they haven't settled on a name yet, I think you are jumping to conclusions, and it the one thing that Beryl has that attracts you is its name, I think you are missing the point here :)

Compiz/Beryl merger is official

Posted Apr 9, 2007 20:19 UTC (Mon) by AJWM (subscriber, #15888) [Link]

I'm inclined to agree with the original poster about the name -- beryl is a very pretty gem mineral (aquamarine is one variety, deep green beryl is emerald), the name instantly makes me think (in a GUI context) of things like semi-transparent window effects.

The name "compiz" sounds like a reject from a computer service bureau of the 1970s, or worse.

And while a rose might smell the same if it were called something like thornyweed, no girl would react the same way to receiving a dozen of them.

Compiz/Beryl merger is official

Posted Apr 9, 2007 21:19 UTC (Mon) by svena (subscriber, #20177) [Link]

Heh, Compis was actually a swedish computer, developed in the eighties. As the Wikipedia article notes, the name is similar to the swedish word for friend, "kompis". So at least for Swedes, the name "Compiz" sounds quite nice ;-)

Compiz/Beryl merger is official

Posted Apr 10, 2007 0:26 UTC (Tue) by jimmybgood (guest, #26142) [Link]

There's plenty of good code in both projects. More code doesn't help. IMO we have way too much code. What I find greatly influences my choice of code is the atmosphere and feel of the project. That's why I love Linux, but despise Firefox.

When I read what David Reveman writes, I get the impression that he thinks his code is being sullied by having ordinary people actually use it. He strikes me as very conservative with a deep need for control. He's not involved with free software, because he believes in it, but because Novell is paying him good money to write it.

Did you read the email he "accidently" sent to the compiz mailing list, where he bemoans all the stupid Beryl coders he's going to have to put up with? It was his elitism and control issues that led to the fork in the first place. And with that email he has sown the seed of discontent that will likely lead to another fork.

No thanks. Not on my computer. I don't want any of that begrudgingly-given crap paid for by a socially irresposible corporation. And I certainly don't need it.

Compiz/Beryl merger is official

Posted Apr 10, 2007 1:14 UTC (Tue) by Sutoka (guest, #43890) [Link]

Fortunately the merged Berpiz (or whatever name they come up with... maybe
Comryl?) isn't going to be the only OpenGL accelerated compositing window
manager out there. There is the kwin_composite branch being developed in
KDE land to extend KWin with all the composity goodness that beryl/compiz
has (from what I've read they've already done most of the lower level
stuff, just really lack the plugins to do the effects). I believe
Metacity also does similar stuff as well, though I haven't heard any news
about more development in that regard for a while now (it might be dead,
it might have massive amount of development going on, no clue really since
I've heard zero about it).

UNFORTUNATELY, from what I've read Beryl does NOT have a true plugin
interface and just expose some of the internals, which means that the
other Windowing-Composite-Managers (WCMs?) can't share the plugins that
Beryl makes (at least at all easily). I'm not sure if the same is true
for Compiz, but theres a good chance it is (since they're forks after
all). Hopefully it isn't too late for a standard compositing-plugin
interface to be developed so that the WCMs can share the plugins (since
KWin will use a new enough version of Qt which uses glib for the event
loop, the old barrier preventing cross-toolkit plugins is gone).

Note: I'm not associated with any of the projects, so what I say could be
inaccurate or flat out wrong... believe what I say as much as you'd
believe a drunk hobo.

Compiz/Beryl merger is official

Posted Apr 10, 2007 2:41 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Compiz is specificly designed for plugins.

That's why it was so nutty to fork Beryl in the first place. Pretty much every single thing they wanted to do could easily be done through plugins for compiz. There was no need for the fork in the first place, it was almost 100% ego driven.

Also Dave Reveman knows his stuff. If him and anybody from Beryl disagrees you can know that 95% he will be right.

He is _THE_ major architect behind not only Compiz, but XGL and X.org related technologies, glitz (OpenGL driven Xrender replacement) and a lot of other things that will help move Linux over to a pure 3D interface.

The parent may not like Novell for the patent disaster, but it's foolish to dismiss the contributions they've made to Linux desktop usability.

You ever use Ubuntu?

Notice how Gnome and apps are more easier to use?
Notice how you have network-manager?
Notice how you have desktop search?
Notice how you have optional 3D desktops?

Do you think that Ubuntu had anything to do with that besides packaging upstream software?

That's all Novell. The developers working for them are behind much of the push for improvement in Linux desktop.

They aren't responsable for all of it. We have Redhat and X.org to thank for things like Kernel improvements and AIGLX, but Novell is still _very_ significant.

People may not like it, but it is what it is.

Compiz/Beryl merger is official

Posted Apr 10, 2007 6:47 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Notice how you have network-manager?

Yes. (And others have noticed, too.)

Compiz/Beryl merger is official

Posted Apr 10, 2007 12:45 UTC (Tue) by Los__D (subscriber, #15263) [Link]

WHAT? A piece of software with BUGS? Nooooo! :o

Compiz/Beryl merger is official

Posted Apr 10, 2007 7:46 UTC (Tue) by Burgundavia (subscriber, #25172) [Link]

Network-manager was started by Red Hat, Novell had netapplet. However, Novell decided to work on a single project rather than two. It is actually a good example of how two companies can work together if they let their engineers talk amongst each other. Another win for Open Source

Compiz/Beryl merger is official

Posted Apr 12, 2007 10:29 UTC (Thu) by hadess (subscriber, #24252) [Link]

> Notice how you have network-manager?
[..]
> That's all Novell. [...]

Not really. NetworkManager was started some years ago by Red Hat...