Lessons from X
summary
Twenty five year old X survives because of concrete choices not slogans: a 2 million line codebase with explicit extension/versioning keeps decades‑old binaries running; the project survives two community transfers (xfree86 → x.org) and a unilateral license change that precipitates governance reform; experiments like LBX fail and get removed while KDrive gets discarded; a custom CVS→git conversion tool is built; development remains small (≈20–30 active devs) so extensibility from day one matters.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Introduction
- 3:22What is X
- 8:35History
- 13:40Wayland
- 23:03Interfaces
- 25:43Inclusive
- 27:14Extensibility
- 29:18Source code management
- 31:34Two big events
- 35:08Policy and mechanism
- 36:46Throwing away code
- 42:01Antilessons
- 45:05ExDevelopers
- 45:30ExExtensions
