Xorg 1.5 missed the train?

[Bill Crawford]

2008/5/21 Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>:

> What is it that would suggest that it is finalized to a manager that might
> want to commit resources to writing a driver his company will have to
> support?

So why should "Fedora" commit to supporting "binary driver Foo" before
their release is ready?

> No, it wouldn't be the same if that label had been applied and announced
> publicly in time for others to coordinate with a shipping date.

You keep saying "publicly" but for the company concerned, who will
have to make their driver work with the ABI in question, it being in
the X server code base and discussed on the mailing lists (which they
do have access to) is reasonable enough information for them to go on.

> Errr, how is that different from breaking?  Interfaces work or not.

It's very different. The driver concerned will continue to work with
the server ABI it was built to work with. Noone has mandated that
every X11 server in the world be updated tomorrow night at midnight!

In other words, it's old news to most, no one is forcing you to use
this new server and "break" your drivers. Of course, you *could* have
used hardware with open source driver support (that is updated already
in the new X.org code base), but noone is forcing you to do so.

> All I expect is a reasonable chance for others to coordinate.  This is like
> shipping a power cord with a new plug style before announcing the matching
> standard for the socket where you are supposed to plug it in.

Not so. In particular, noone is forcing you to change the existing
sockets, and the new design was settled on quite some time ago. The
people producing the plug are well aware of this process and have
chosen to not update their plug design to match yet, ... and I have
really had enough of these analogies even if you haven't.