Someone quick, give this guy a job working on any kind of desktop and pay him money to come up with ideas.
I'm no X-windows guru, nor am I a hard core driver hacker (in fact I've been doing J2EE work for the past 4 years or so). But I do know one thing about the engineer who wrote that code and wrote that paper, he's what we all should strive to be like. Not the fact that his idea might not be perfect, and not the fact that his idea may never compete with X*, but the fact that he is driven. He's thorough, systematic, he challenges conventions and has the drive and determination to sit down think through a problem, find a solution and implement it. Then he goes back and tests it, compares it to the competition and spend a good chuck of time thinking about how to expand the idea, the possibilities. He's not the guy who just sits around complaining about the problems and ripping apart all the solutions. He's the one making steps to solve the problems.
In 15 years (hopefully), the world won't be run by desktops or workstations running X or even Y or Z. It will be run by software that takes all the great concepts from all of them, none of the bad concepts and a few new concepts and puts them together.
The philosophy behind Y can be applied to any project and any technology, whether its an OS, a graphics system, a protocol, a web framework or a new language.
Enough ranting, my hat is off to this man.
