It Looks Like X.Org 7.5 Will Be Released Late

[mattst88]

I dont ship Xorg 7.4, but Xserver 1.4 - but together with realtively current radeon(hd).

Swing and a miss. Strike two.

[drees]

but basically i can only report problems to upstream. What you refer to can only be done by really huge distribuitions.

For non-coders, that is the best thing they can do, report bugs and file informative bug reports that help the developers track down the problem and hopefully are able to test patches.

This last bit can be problematic because of the number of components that often need to be synced up to test the latest code out of trunk and a number of people have issues trying to build code from source.

[deanjo]

I'm sorry to say people that bitch in forums and even write the articles don't really matter to us. If you feel X.org owes you something, you probably owe it more.

Sorry Dave, first of all don't say your sorry to say it when your not at all, secondly this is the EXACTLY attitude that holds back adoption of FOSS solutions. It caters to the whims of the developer, not it's potential user.

[nanonyme]

If all the major distros synchronized their freeze dates (as has been suggested) then it might make sense to switch xorg to a time-driven release model rather than the current content-driven model, but AFAIK that kind of cross-distro coordination has not happened yet.

Sorry but the thought of distros doing that kind of cooperation just sounds hilarious to me. It seems more of an cross-distro competition than a cross-distro cooperation world to me... (which is kind of to be expected since everyone's pretty much offering the same thing; it's a bit like having a mall in which there are pizzerias competing with each other and the only differences they have are the wrappings)

[nanonyme]

It caters to the whims of the developer, not it's potential user.

Is this somehow a surprise when you think *why* the software was written in the first place? It's not like people were running a charity, they do software development because they
0) are interested in it and gain personal gratification of getting things done and learning new cool stuff
1) are paid to do it
2) segfault

[deanjo]

Is this somehow a surprise when you think *why* the software was written in the first place? It's not like people were running a charity, they do software development because they
0) are interested in it and gain personal gratification of getting things done and learning new cool stuff
1) are paid to do it
2) segfault

It's not a surprise at all. It's not also a surprise that companies that develop towards the wants and needs of their target users go onto financial success, mass adoption and domination.

[Redeeman]

Sorry Dave, first of all don't say your sorry to say it when your not at all, secondly this is the EXACTLY attitude that holds back adoption of FOSS solutions. It caters to the whims of the developer, not it's potential user.

not entirely true.

free software developers, unless paid to do so, writes stuff almost certainly because they want the product. They too are users, and no offense, but as the users who actually has the biggest amount of clue as to how stuff actually works, they are the most qualified to make decisions.

Now, on free software, sure, the developers has the final words, but they ARE users too.

now compare this to proprietary software, which entire purpose is to generate money, if the company doing that specific software think it will make them just 1 millionth of a dollar more to completely screw over the end user, they will do it, and theres examples of this ALL over.

in short, your argument is just crap.

[drees]

Sorry Dave, first of all don't say your sorry to say it when your not at all, secondly this is the EXACTLY attitude that holds back adoption of FOSS solutions. It caters to the whims of the developer, not it's potential user.

Frankly, Dave is right.

Bitching about why something is late or behind schedule without any offer to help or provide solutions does nothing but aggravate the developers.

Look at it from Dave's point of view - he spends his life toiling away working on X code which most would consider hardly glamorous or exciting.

He is already over worked and under appreciated, and now a bunch of users start bitching because the schedule has slipped without offering up any real help or solutions?

Please - ignoring the flames that occur when a schedule slips is the only way to remain sane.

[deanjo]

not entirely true.

free software developers, unless paid to do so, writes stuff almost certainly because they want the product. They too are users, and no offense, but as the users who actually has the biggest amount of clue as to how stuff actually works, they are the most qualified to make decisions.

Now, on free software, sure, the developers has the final words, but they ARE users too.

now compare this to proprietary software, which entire purpose is to generate money, if the company doing that specific software think it will make them just 1 millionth of a dollar more to completely screw over the end user, they will do it, and theres examples of this ALL over.

in short, your argument is just crap.

Sorry Redeeman but your argument is crap. First of all, leading software companies spend millions in end user work groups, believe it or not majority DOES rule in closed source development. I'm not saying everybodies whim gets incorporated but there has been many improvements to closed source software based solely on consumer needs and wants. Perhaps you haven't worked alot in the closed source community but this IS how successful closed sourced developers work. Of course they want to make money, it's their whole point of existence and to make that money you have to supply what your users want. It's one of the simplest concepts in economics Supply vs Demand.

I never said that a FOSS developer doesn't have the ability to do it. By all means they do. Now I admit that I was harsh in cornering all of FOSS in one lump sum as there are successful thriving FOSS projects out there. Well guess what those ones are the ones that are LISTENING to the needs and wants of the less qualified and their end users. It's a "Can do" vs "Want to do" attitude.

[deanjo]

Look at it from Dave's point of view - he spends his life toiling away working on X code which most would consider hardly glamorous or exciting.

I experience what Dave experiences every day but yet somehow we realize what we may think is totally different then what utimately the end user wants. End users do not care how it is done or the internals, they just want it. We use the "Can do" attitude, if an appreciable quantity of clients want a feature then we do it. we don't sit there bitching about what a pain in the ass it is or it doesn't hold our personal interest or sometimes we even think it's downright retarded. If the demand is there we do it. That's probably why in a world wide recession, we are enjoying record profits measuring in the millions, growing sales, and our clients use our brand for a substitute for slacking off. They let the software do the work for them. We enjoy making people lazy.

BTW, our total code is twice the size of Xserver and drivers included with a development team of smaller then the xorg crew alone. On top of that we also have to maintain the self built IDE that is under GPL2.