Xorg 1.5 missed the train?

Adam Jackson ajax at redhat.com
Wed May 21 14:25:00 UTC 2008


On Tue, 2008-05-20 at 19:19 -0700, Christopher Stone wrote:

> > In the real world, you're asking Fedora to do something to enable
> > binary drivers which goes against it's goals. And then you're whining
> > about it when we say no.
> 
> Oh yea, to have one developer spend one day to provide a compatibility
> route for a large number of Fedora users is just *way* too much to
> ask...sheesh...
> 
> I'm not asking for someone to spend a year full time on this, it would
> only take about one day's worth of effort as far as I can see.

That's so adorably misguided.

Let's see.  Compat packages for the X server and every driver.  That's
about sixty new packages, all of which have to go through new package
review.  Even if they're all perfect, you're looking at a good 30
minutes apiece just to get the things into CVS, then another hour or so
until everything manages to bubble out of koji.  Except, of course, that
they won't be perfect, since they'll file-conflict with the non-compat
drivers.  So you'll have to add explicit Conflicts to each of now ~120
packages.  Okay, more like an hour for each package now, since we're
having to test packaging behaviour.  Ooh, and now we're picking up an
additional set of packages to apply stability fixes to.

So, uh.  A week and a half of doing _nothing_ _else_, when I'm already
clearly overscheduled.  A good solid sixty hours of work, plus a
continuing time investment of essentially a whole new current distro to
support, a level of time investment that I wouldn't sign up for for
RHEL for less than seven figures of revenue.  All to continue to make
some binary driver work.

How's no sound?  Is no good for you?  No's great for me.

Let me put this as politely as possible: compatibility X server packages
are out of the fucking question.  I've refused them in paid supported
products for strong technical and support reasons, and I'm not about to
start doing them for free just to get my jollies preserving
interoperability with someone's binary blob.

- ajax
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/attachments/20080521/fa9ab205/attachment.sig>


More information about the fedora-devel-list mailing list