I always found the backlash against this project somewhat baffling. The display server problem goes back a long ways. We've had a couple of distinct groups of opinions: a) people who think X is just fine b) people who think replacing X is a worthy task, and who've started to explore the topic in earnest.
What we've been lacking was c) people who can articulate a pressingly urgent use case where a new display server is on the critical path, AND have the resources to code it up. Canonical is, as far as I know, the first in that category.
I agree with the supposition that, IF Wayland/Westland represented a suitable head start on meeting the goals that Canonical has with Mir, that Canonical would do well to invest its resources there. Outside of Canonical, there has been a lot of debate as to whether the "Wayland/Westland is the right direction for Canonical" supposition is true.
At the end, I tend to give more weight Canonical's opinion in this matter. They are, after all, urgently developing a project in which a new display server is on the critical path. The risk in foregoing the head start offered by Wayland/Westland is primarily on them.
From the vantage point of this casual observer, Mir has lit a fire for the Wayland/Westland project. That's great! If unifying against a common threat is what pushes the project along at a faster rate, that's okay. But I still tend to think that Canonical is going to win this race by virtue of them having something to strive for on the other side of building a display server.
Sure, but that's "the resources of Canonical" (more like a small amount of Canonical's already relatively meagre development resources, on a project that is not exactly a crucial enabler or breadwinner) vs. practically everyone else in the Open Source industry and community.
In my experience, "practically everyone else in the Open Source industry and community" only means the developers are N > 0. I like to believe that N -> Infinity, but I think very many projects N -> 0.
There are few open source projects where even one or two talented, dedicated, full-time developers would not represent a substantial increase in labor. There was just an article posted a day or two ago talking about how people would be surprised if they knew how small some teams at Apple really were.
This isn't to disparage F/OSS development. I still believe in the development model more than others. I just think we need to be realistic about project resources. Open source isn't magic in this regard.
>> I always found the backlash against this project somewhat baffling.
In my case, I found the Wayland concept very compelling from the beginning. I had thought X had become bloated and needed a replacement. The Wayland approach seemed to be a huge simplification and in need of developers to bring it home. From my POV it looked like Mir happened because Canonical agreed about X and thought Wayland looked like a nice idea but they had slightly different ideas and forked for reasons I never really understood. After reading this interview I still don't understand. A fork without clear purpose can seem like a waste of resources and market fragmentation and that will lead to some resentment. I suspect some of it is related to their desire to support closed-source blob drivers and I can understand that, but I also had enough of that world and don't want anyone to support it. In the end, I personally don't hate Mir, but I still don't understand why they're doing it. Either way I look forward to running a simplified desktop without X.
Ah yes, Android. I don't actually know enough about the technology or licensing in this case to assess this idea's merit. It's hard to argue with the existing market penetration of Android tech though. If SurfaceFlinger or something derived from it could be used, that does seem rather an obvious solution.
EDIT: I found this page, which at least presents some reasoning for why a new system rather than SurfaceFlinger: http://kdubois.net/?p=1815
