[compiz] The future of Compiz

[Hongli Lai]

Hi guys.

I'm not a Compiz developer, just a regular Ubuntu user (though I am a
programmer). I hope you'll appreciate my input.

I feel that something must definitely be done, that someone should
make a decision about what to do with Compiz++ so that everyone can
move forward. I think that at this point, it doesn't really matter
what the decision is, because Compiz is stuck as long as no decision
is made. Some people won't be happy with the decision, but that's
inevitable. Merging or discarding Compiz++, whichever is chosen,
someone will have to give up his work. As a fellow programmer I can
understand that the author doesn't want to throw away his work, but I
think it's also important to swallow some pride for the sake of the
project/community.

In any case, I agree that it's a good idea to have a stable/release
branch ala traditional Compiz and a 'fun'/experimental branch ala
Beryl. With git and other distributed version control systems, this is
entirely possible. I'm currently very active in the Ruby on Rails
community, and the use of git has done wonders to Ruby on Rails and
other open source Ruby projects. A lot of people freely experiment
with new features. Whenever the core team feels that it's appropriate,
they merge in a feature branch and/or cherry-pick the desired changes.
It works really really well and development is moving really quickly;
it's a development model that I can recommend.

Regards,
Hongli Lai