I'm curious to see what kind of model this will turn out to be. Although I'd really like to finally have a usable alternative to X11 - X11 is simply a rather gruesome construction in places. A solution like Mac OS X would be good: a new, native GUI with a workable model and a well-integrated X11 server for old applications.
Because let's be honest: the mess of GUI toolkits that arose from the fact that X11 was designed to be toolkit-neutral and doesn't prefer any one of them is one of the big handicaps for Unix on the desktop. And no, KDE or Gnome aren't really a complete answer to that, because they disguise the problems of the base technology but don't really solve them.
That would be something for 2004: finally develop a usable GUI for Unix. Does anyone still need a good New Year's resolution?
At heise online news there's the original article.