Gettys: Time to lead on the desktop

Jim Gettys, one of the original X Window System programmers (among many other things) has put up a lengthy call to the community to take the lead in the design of desktop software. "Our fundamental advantage we have is the ability to experiment and modify all areas of the stack; from hardware, to the window system, though toolkits to applications. Just as compositing has allowed a thousand flowers to bloom (most of which stink, but we've picked some that smell pretty sweet) in eye candy, accessibility and in other areas, compositing and other modern free software technologies can be used in new an unexpected ways. We are able to perform experiments, and have a large audience to test the experiments radically faster than commercial software."

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