Pull off AIGLX repoistory?

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn]

Sean wrote:
> 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.

The users will get all those benefits when they update to/install FC6. 
Releasing new and incompatible versions isn't the problem the problem is 
doing so as update for past seemingly stable releases breaking user 
configurations knowingly.

>> 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.

FC5 seems to do fine with Xorg 7.0 as it is and if people want to live on 
the bleeding edge this is what rawhide is for. I doubt that hurting your 
own community like that can be called a "reasonable course of action" under 
any circumstances.

>> 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.

I'm not holding my breath but one can hope I guess. Anyway since the 
central argument against this push keeps getting ignored (introducing 
breakage in stable releases as opposed to rawhide) and since I run neither 
FC5 nor a proprietary driver I'll just let it go and we can agree to 
disagree on the fedora update policies in this particular case.

Regards,
   Dennis