Xorg 1.5 missed the train?

[Jason Tang]

Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 2:11 PM, Jason Tang <jtang at magma.ca> wrote:
>   
>> I just don't think neglecting 2/3 of the user base makes sense.  The fact
>> is, many people use nvidia hardware.  It would have seemed that pushing Xorg
>> 1.4.99 to the development repo would have made more sense from a stability
>> perspective.  After all, it is a 'pre-release'.
>>     
>
> 2/3 of the userbase? Are you relying on smolt stats for that?
>
> Please read the
> http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=107725&page=3 thread
> comment #42 for what is probably a very accurate picture of the timeline here.
>
> The whole thread is actually a valuable read.  There was more than
> enough time for Nvidia to release beta drivers against the stable ABI
> if they desired to do so.
>
> Look at it this way... what if we did all our open driver development
> like nvidia does. What if the open video drivers were not ported until
> xserver 1.5 was officially released? Would there be any value at all
> in doing open video driver development that way? The changes that the
> nvidia driver need are surely on par with the changes the open drivers
> needed and they could have been done in the same timescale.  The real
> question is why isn't NVidia syncing their driver development with the
> upstream process? And we aren't going to answer that here.
>
> -jef
>
>   
2/3, 1/3...  1/4...   whatever.  I'm sure you understand my point that 
there are a large number or eager F9 users in pain out there.

I read that nvnews thread (for the second time).  And yes, I agree that 
(in a perfect world) nvidia should play nice, or at least keep their eye 
on the ball concerning upstream changes that may affect them.

Granted, I don't follow the dev group all that closely, so hopefully you 
can forgive me for thinking that what we seem to have is a circle of 
groups blaming one another for their own collective failure to deliver.

Of course, I can and will wait for the drivers I need to work before 
upgrading my primary system.  Perhaps most of us 'users' would have been 
content with a heads-up about the nvidia breakage, and maybe a rough 
timeline of when to expect a fix.  That way there would not have been so 
many struggling now.