xc/programs considered harmful

[Soeren Sandmann]

Stuart Kreitman <Stuart.Kreitman at Sun.COM> writes:

> You can say that Modular is not getting shouted down every time
> the word is uttered, but that's because the argument has gone around
> in circles and its not worthwhile to bleet on.  AFAIK Modular hasn't
> received enough effort for its proponents to be able to say "Look at
> this, its a better idea, and you can now see for yourself".  The
> Modular

It *is* a much better idea. In a nutshell, nobody cares about
everything in the tree, so nobody should be forced to deal with
everything. 

People should only deal with the things they care about.

That is why xterm should be separated from the X server: people who
care about it should maintain it and they shouldn't have to deal with
the X server. Conversely I don't care about xterm, but I do care about
the X server, so I shouldn't have to build xterm just to hack on the
server.

The same argument applies to every other logically separate
module. 

The fact is that the X tree takes a long time to build and that it can
at times be quite hard to compile it, and that is a real barrier for
people who want to work on it.

> proponents need to increase their own value but not by diminishing the
> value of Monolithic.

The only argument *against* modularization that I have heard is "This
is the way it has always been".


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