Xorg 1.5 missed the train?

[Dave Airlie]

On Tue, 2008-05-20 at 19:52 -0400, Jason Tang wrote:
> Dave Airlie wrote:
> > On Tue, 2008-05-20 at 17:23 -0400, Jason Tang wrote:
> >   
> >> The only problem being that this release is incompatible with current
> >> nvidia drivers.  Granted, I'm aware of the Fedora position regarding
> >> non-OSS, but this Xorg issue has completely destroyed many user's
> >> confidence in the dev team.
> >>
> >> Most users could care less about supposed 'valid' reasons - that fact
> >> is: No 3D acceleration == No F9 adoption (or worse, an eroding user
> >> base).  Lets not play this game with F10.
> >>
> >>     
> >
> > Let me just state, this is not going to happen ever. If you want hold
> > your desktop ransom to a large binary piece of software, I'm sure
> > Microsoft will sell you an OS more suited to your needs.
> >
> > Fedora is about having an open distro and we are *never* going to expend
> > time or effort to support a binary driver. I say this as the
> > co-maintainer of X.org for Fedora. Fedora is not ajax's or mine primary
> > reason for being paid, we really wish it was. However even if Fedora was
> > the only thing I was scheduled to work on, I would still not expend even
> > one small shred of effort to support a binary driver running on this OS.
> > You buy hardware with closed source you now get to keep both bits.
> >
> > unsure if I can clarify this any better.
> >
> > Dave.
> >
> >
> >
> >   
> Believe it or not - I do agree with Fedora's OSS principles.  However, 
> as the professional I know you are (despite the tone of your reply), I'm 
> sure you can understand the importance of hardware compatibility.  
> Nobody is saying you need to bend over backwards for nvidia, but 
> actively working to break support probably isn't the right approach 
> either.  Surely you can find a way to collaborate with X.org, Nvidia and 
> the Fedora team in a way that promotes progress, rather than stifle it.
> 
> 

We already know a way, its called open source development. They release
the source to their driver, and I make it work with the release of X.org
I personally ported nearly all the X.org driver in Fedora to the new
API/ABI (~15 drivers). This was close too a full week of work, that
really I could've not done and just let old hardware die. However I took
the time to do this because the source was available. If I had the
source to the nvidia driver I would have ported it as well. So I've done
the professional bit and fixed as much as I can, if *your* hw vendor
doesn't support *your* OS of choice then I think the problem is between
you and your hw vendor.

Dave.