Xorg 1.5 missed the train?

[Erich Zigler]

I have been reading this thread all evening and quite frankly it makes
me sick to my stomach. I consider Fedora developers and users to be
the cream of the crop of the Linux community. Unfortunately this
thread has not shown that to be the case. I am horrified for any one
who happens upon this thread via the mailing list archive as an
example of what the Fedora community is about. I would like to make
the following points in regard to this issue.

1. As a Fedora user who uses Fedora as a desktop machine and requires
the bits that the proprietary binary Nvidia driver provides I am not a
second class user. Individuals who have the ability to run OSS video
drivers are not any better or worse then I am they just have different
needs and requirements.

2. Demanding that a Red Hat employee who may or may not be paid to
work on Fedora is not doing his job is distasteful. I have been
involved in quite a few OSS projects over the years and OSS is about
freedom. The freedom to work on what you find interesting or feel
there is a need for. If an individual is not happy with how things are
going the individual is free to make the changes they feel are
important or help facilitate that change.  OSS development is largely
powered by volunteers.

3. The root issue is that Fedora shipped a prerelease version of Xorg
that many are unhappy with. They are mainly unhappy with this fact
because it shortens the time they can use Fedora 9 due to their
hardware issues. This decision affected a portion of the user base. I
hope that the thought and consideration went in to such a decision as
this kind of Fedora backlash was expected. As geeks we always want the
latest and greatest and Fedora 9 symbolizes that. This again does not
make them second class users.

4. Not everyone is as up to date on what is and is not supported as we
are. We must remember the little guy. The user who is just starting
out with Linux or is still a novice. The user who runs the upgrade and
expects everything to work as it did in Fedora 8. Fedora is a great
distribution but we all know how FUD can overtake a great thing.

5. Expecting Fedora to cater to proprietary video card drivers is
unrealistic. However it is not unrealistic to keep the user in mind
when making such design decisions. More individuals were positively
affected by the decision to include a prerelease version of Xorg then
not. In the future I would recommend getting out in front of issues
such as this as to prepare the user base. A subpoint under the Xorg
portion of the Release Notes stating that version xx.yy of Nvidia
drivers and version xx.yy of ATI drivers would not work with Fedora 9
I feel would have helped tremendously.

Personally, this issue has made me want to get more involved in Fedora
development. This is OSS and it is what we make of it.

Thanks for reading,

Erich