some closure on the xorg updates issue

[Max Spevack]

re-posted here from fedora-advisory-board

=========

I wanted to spend a minute in response to the various threads about the 
XOrg update that were on fedora-devel-list last week, and also as a 
response to some of the blogosphere articles that were generated from 
those threads, for example:

http://blog.eweek.com/blogs/eweek_labs/archive/2006/08/02/12050.aspx

There are several parts to this issue:

1) The xorg update is of benefit to Fedora users who do not depend on 
proprietary drivers for their video cards.

2) As such, this update would be bad for users who do rely on proprietary 
drivers, mainly because those proprietary drivers are not updated to 
function properly with the new xorg code.  Users who upgrade will be in a 
tough spot until their proprietary software vendors relese updates.

3) The Fedora Project does not support any sort of proprietary software. 
"Once free, always free".

4) The number of Fedora users who, due to the hardware that they own, are 
forced to rely on proprietary video drivers is significant enough for us 
to be concerned about breaking their systems.

5) This is more complicated than the case in which we release a new 
kernel, because in that case it is trivial for a user to boot an old, 
working kernel. In the case where packages are updated, the roll-back is 
not as trivial of a process.

6) The xorg update is not a security update.

So there is a balance to be struck -- on one side you have the desire to 
not make concessions to proprietary software vendors, but on the other 
side you have the very real problem of unnecessarily breaking the systems 
of users.

In short, it's a major change with only modest benefit, and a better 
solution is coming soon.  That's an argument that resonates with me, and 
that has nothing to do with proprietary software, and everything to do 
with stability for users.

Therefore, holding off on a non-security update in order to not break 
users' systems, to me, is a reasonable decision to make in this situation, 
especially when we are focusing our efforts entirely on Fedora Core 6 at 
this point, which will include the most up to date Xorg software anyway.

I would further state that not all the members of the Fedora Board share 
this exact opinion on this issue, but there is a general consensus that 
holding off on this update for fc5 is the "better" decision of the two, 
and so the Board does stand behind that decision as a group.

In addition, this debate has shown that we have a clear need to articulate 
our update policy as clearly as possible, so that future decisions like 
this will be easier to make.  The work in that regard is going on here, 
and I hope that Fedora community members will join in.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/UpdatesPolicy

-- 
Max Spevack
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