Pull off AIGLX repoistory?

[Sean]

On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:10:42 +0200
Dennis Jacobfeuerborn <d.jacobfeuerborn at conversis.de> wrote:

> You do because you know for a fact that there are a lot of people out there
> running these drivers with FC5 and you know for a fact that pushing this 
> upgrade will break their configuration.

It's also a fact that many FC5 users out there will benefit from improvements
to the open source drivers included in 7.1.  Since Fedora is meant to
showcase and supply the latest open source software it makes sense that
the needs of these users win over users of other software.

> Now your argument is getting disingenuous. None of this has anything to do 
> with "stop releasing new open source software because 3rd party proprietary 
> software hasn't been updated to work with it". You can break proprietary 
> software/drivers/modules each and every day in rawhide for all I care. This 
> is about knowingly and deliberately breaking existing user setups.

Isn't this just a matter of managing user expectations?  From watching the
mailing lists it seems to me most users understand the tradeoffs they make
when using binary driver.  One of which is that they have to hold off
upgrading until a new binary driver is released.  As Mike made clear,
all the FC5 users who don't use binary drivers should not be deprived of
an update based on the whims of a binary driver provider.

> Yet a "yum update" will not give you any advanced warning about this. Also 
> what happens if the next update contains a patch for a security issue? In 
> that case users are forced to update anyway pretty much removing the 
> "choice" you are talking about.

It is possible to add an exclusion to yum so that it will not update X
automatically.  As for not being able to update because of a security issue,
that's again another downside users of binary drivers just have to accept.
The non-binary driver users shouldn't have to forgo getting an update
just because of the binary driver users.

> Perhaps. But then I'm not running FC5 but rawhide without any proprietary 
> drivers so it's just as easy to shrug this of for me as it is for you. What 
> I was trying to point out is that you hurt the community you release to 
> more than you help it with this "fuck the world" attitude.

It's not a "fuck the world" attitude at all, it's prioritizing the needs
of open source users above the needs of binary-driver users.  Yes it kinda
sucks, but it is a reasonable course of action given the mission of Fedora.

> PS: The irony that most of the good stuff added in recent iterations of X 
> can only be enjoyed using the proprietary drivers by a lot of people does 
> not escape me and given the eventual demise of older chips (like eg 
> r100/r200) and the complete lack of documentation for newer chips (like the 
> r500 series) will only make this situation worse.

Things have been getting better on the ATI front, the r300/r400 3D support is
pretty good now in the open source driver (which was accomplished without any
documentation either).  I don't know how much different the r500 line is, but
it may not be that hard to extend the driver to support it.  As an aside, since
AMD just purchased ATI i'm crossing my fingers they'll find a way to improve
the situation.

Sean