Major Contributors to XFree86 Development

Here are some details of the significant contributions that are being made to the XFree86 development effort by Metro Link, S.u.S.E., VA Linux Systems and Red Hat.

Metro Link and XFree86

Metro Link Incorporated has been working closely with XFree86 on some important parts of our next major release (XFree86 4.0). This has included donating many of their developments and enhancements back to the XFree86 Project. The XFree86 Project is appreciative of the significant contribution that this represents.

This is what Garry Paxinos, Vice President of Metro Link Incorporated says about the cooperation between Metro Link and The XFree86 Project.

Metro Link recognizes the importance of the Linux operating system in the world market and was the first company to ship commercial software for Linux. As a contributing sponsor of the XFree86 Project, Metro Link donates many of their developments and enhancements back to the XFree86 Project.

Some of Metro Link's technological donations that will be included in the XFree86-4.0 release are:

DYNAMIC LOADER TECHNOLOGY
Developed a new loader architecture and specific implementations for ELF, COFF, and XCOFF objects, making it possible for the X server to load these modules at runtime. This eliminates the need to rebuild X server binaries and allows developers to distribute updated modules without having to touch any other files. Server extensions can be loaded and unloaded as needed.
STAND-ALONE CONFIG FILE PARSING
Wrote and modularized the configuration parsing software, which helps to make one of the more fragile parts of the current XFree86 code more stable and easier to extend.
SUPPORT FOR POWERMAX OS
Did a PCI redesign to work better on different architectures, including Concurrent's PowerMax OS.
CLOSE COOPERATION IN DESIGN WORK AND BUG FIXING
Metro Link places its donations, including the dynamic loader technology, under an X Consortium-style copyright, so that the technology will be truly free. This gives the XFree86 Project the right to use the donated source code for any purpose.

The donated software is also part of Metro-X, Metro Link's commercial X server, which continues to be used in demanding mission-critical environments. For more information on this or any of the Metro Link products for Linux, please visit the Metro Link website.

SuSE GmbH

SuSE GmbH, one of the major supporters of XFree86, has started to release a small series of their own X servers. These servers are based on XFree86 code and released with permission of The XFree86 Project, Inc. All work related to these servers is contributed back to XFree86, these servers will be included in XFree86's next public release.

This is what happened in XFree86-3.3.2 with all XSuSE servers except for XSuSE_Elsa_GLoria. The reasons for not including XSuSE_Elsa_GLoria were purely legal ones and outside the control of SuSE GmbH or The XFree86 Project, Inc.

These problems were since resolved and therefore this server (as well as all the other XFCom servers available from SuSE) will be included in XFree86-3.3.3.

Check the SuSE XFCom webpage for more details about these servers. Please contact SuSE's XFCom support address with all comments, questions, or reports regarding these servers.

In addition to their work on these servers, SuSE has contributed in many ways to XFree86, through donations as well engineering resources that were paid by SuSE and working on XFree86.

Red Hat and VA Linux Systems

The XFree86 Project is pleased to acknowledge the significant contributions that Red Hat Inc. and Precision Insight Inc. (now part of VA Linux Systems) are making to the development of XFree86.

Red Hat and Precision Insight initially provided Linux binary-only X servers for video hardware that wasn't previously supported (this included the Intel i740 and a range of NeoMagic chipsets). These and other drivers have since been integrated into XFree86 source releases.

3D Multipipe Direct Rendering Infrastructure

Red Hat also funded a Precision Insight development effort to create a Multipipe Direct Rendering Infrastructure for use with MESA which will be fully integrated into the industry standard XFree86 X server. The infrastructure fully supports direct hardware rendering into multiple X windows. The sample implementation (SI) of this infrastructure supports MESA in software only, and will contains a set of hardware accelerated functions to demonstrate how complete hardware support can be added for any 3D hardware. The SI includes complete 2D and 3D source and has been released under the normal XFree86 license.

Last Modified: 23 October 2000