VirtualGL 2.5.90 (2.6 beta1) has been released

[DRC]

Official binaries and source tarball are here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualgl/files/2.5.90%20%282.6beta1%29/

Change log is here:
https://github.com/VirtualGL/virtualgl/releases/tag/2.6beta1/

Some other items of business, while I have your attention:

SEEKING FUNDED DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES

This project/product exists only because of your patronage. Every major
feature added to VirtualGL since 2009 has been made possible by funded
development contracts and grants (refer to
https://VirtualGL.org/About/Sponsors.) Maintaining the project as an
independent developer allows me to keep VirtualGL free of any one
organization's agenda, which ensures that everyone will continue to have
unfettered access to this technology (TurboVNC too!) However, I can
only remain independent as long as I am able to pay my bills, and that's
becoming increasingly difficult.

I accept donations using both PayPal or major cryptocurrencies (links
are here: https://VirtualGL.org), but for the most part, funded
development and general sponsorship opportunities are what keep the
lights on. If you have ideas for how to move this project forward, then
please file a feature request on GitHub:
https://github.com/VirtualGL/virtualgl/issues. Even better, if your
organization wants a feature badly enough to pay for it, then please
contact me. There are a handful of features marked "funding needed",
and most of those features probably won't ever happen unless an
organization steps forward to fund them. I accept patches/pull requests
as well, but complex patches/pull requests can take a lot of effort to
review, test, and integrate, even if they are carefully-developed.

Among the features in need of funding are:

-- OpenGL ES support (which includes EGL/X11 support):
https://github.com/VirtualGL/virtualgl/issues/66
-- Support for the Vulkan API:
https://github.com/VirtualGL/virtualgl/issues/37
-- Eliminating the need for a 3D X server (which is likely to include a
wholesale re-factoring of VirtualGL to use FBOs instead of Pbuffers):
https://github.com/VirtualGL/virtualgl/issues/10
-- Deferred readback mode (reducing multi-user GPU overhead by only
reading back the frames that are actually sent, improving readback
performance by eliminating memory copies, and giving transport plugins
the ability to apply additional GPU processing to the pixels before
reading them back):
https://github.com/VirtualGL/virtualgl/issues/9

SEEKING GENERAL SPONSORS

We are likely to need new general sponsors to fund at least 100 hours of
my labor, starting in 2019, in order to keep VirtualGL healthy. The
VirtualGL General Fund pays for project maintenance, bug fixes, and
community support, including:

-- Spinning new releases (including maintaining the VirtualGL YUM and
Cygwin repositories, and the SourceForge project page)
-- Maintaining VirtualGL.org (including paying for web hosting)
-- Maintaining the GitHub repositories and backups thereof
-- Maintaining the official Docker build image
-- Maintaining the Travis and Appveyor CI build systems for pre-releases
-- Answering questions here and on GitHub (including assisting new users
with installation problems)
-- Investigating bugs and other issues reported by the community
-- Fixing bugs and minor application interaction issues
-- Reviewing, testing, and integrating contributed code for bug fixes
and minor features
-- Doing other un-sexy things like reformatting the source code (I spent
literally two weeks on this-- mostly unpaid-- prior to this release.
Many regular expressions were involved.)

If there's anything left in the General Fund at the end of the year,
then I use the remainder to implement strategically-important features.
The sponsor of the General Fund gets to decide what is strategically
important, and any bug fixes and support they need throughout the year
will receive top priority.

OTHER CONTRACT WORK

Also please note that, in addition to contract work on VirtualGL, I do
general software contracting on other code bases (including other open
source projects, as well as proprietary/company-specific code.) Some of
the services I provide include:

-- Build system and CI improvements (including custom Docker images)
-- General consulting and development work related to remote display and
streaming video technologies-- including competitive analysis,
troubleshooting, differential performance analysis, and optimization
-- Code optimization and high-performance computing/graphics
programming, including development/acceleration of 3D and image
processing applications/algorithms, acceleration of low-level algorithms
using SIMD instructions, OpenCL programming, multithreading, distributed
multiprocessing (including MPI), hand-tuned assembly, compiler
wrangling, and other techniques.
-- X11 application, server, and framework development (I am very
friendly with the X.org code)
-- High-performance Java programming (with emphasis on image processing,
streaming, and high-speed graphics display)
-- General advice regarding open source issues, including choosing
licenses for new code or re-licensing existing code

These outside contracts help me remain independent and thus indirectly
benefit VirtualGL.