Gtk DirectFB backend

[Mike Emmel <mike emmel gmail com>]

I just got the message on all the bug reports that the DirectFB
backend is being removed for 3.0.

First you waited too long to do it. I'm glad its finally removed.

I tried to do the build and they will come approach hoping that if a
decent port was resurrected a community would
form.

Well they did not come and its too big of a project to try and do in
your spare time.

This is just one of those things that happens in opensource but I have
to think that its also a failure of the embedded
community which was the primary user.

Perhaps I'll get flamed for this but so what.

In my years of working on embedded linux I've seen the embedded
community do and awful lot of taking from the opensource community and
very little in the way of giving back. Perhaps the decision to remove
DirectFB support can serve is a bit of a wake up call that you can't
take forever.

Kudo's for making the decision it needed to be done a long time ago. I
kept hoping someone would step up and support it and never managed to
give up.

As I said if your and company making embedded products based on open
source its time to finally start thinking about giving back and stop
only taking. And thats not just patches here and there but fundamental
support if you want to see the opensource continue to be valuable.

And yes there have been valuable contributions I'm not disputing that
but software regardless of if its open or closed source needs
continuous support to thrive and grow that was not provided for
DirectFB and indeed for a multitude of open source projects used in
the embedded world. The DirectFB port died because the embedded
community itself has problems and I suspect unless things change it
won't be the last project that eventually becomes difficult to use in
the embedded world if the community continues to fail to support
opensource.

Am I sad yes I put a lot of work in it. Am I angry not really just
resigned to long haul I love both embedded programming and open source
so I'm committed, just I recognize  that its a slow and painful
process in this community to build a solid opensource foundation.