Phoronix has up an article looking at the release of X Server 1.4.1. This maintenance release for X.Org, which many open-source operating systems depend upon for living in a graphically-rich world, is coming more than 200 days late and it doesn’t even clear the BugZilla release blocker bug. According to Phoronix, there are more problems for X.org than just this one.The next major release of X.Org was scheduled to be released February 2008 – and then May 2008 – and now it’s missing, with no sign of when a release will occur. There’s still more than three dozen outstanding bugs. This forthcoming release (X.Org 7.4) will also ship with a slimmer set of features than what was initially planned.
X.Org 7.4 was originally slated to ship in February, but it didn’t even have a release manager until February when Red Hat’s Adam Jackson had stepped up to the plate. Adam had then rescheduled X.Org 7.4 for a May release, in order to make the cut for Fedora 9. As we are still talking about it, X.Org 7.4 obviously didn’t make it out in May as intended, but an early X Server 1.5 pre-release was included.[…]
On top of that, X.Org 7.4 is shipping with a slimmer set of features than what was planned. X.Org 7.4 was supposed to have Multi-Pointer X (MPX), but that was delayed (though it will be ready for X.Org 7.5). Also sliced out of this release was input hotness, or XKB 2 and Xi 2.
It appears more people are worried about the degrading quality of X.org releases. Out-of-date documentation, blocker bugs lists that are not empty, the complete tree and module set not buildable on one platform, and despite the 200 day delay, X.org 7.4 still has blocker bugs. For such an important piece of software, this is not an ideal situation.
Setup a fund raiser and let people donate money for funding developers or something.
Open source is not free free. It costs developer resources. Someone has to do it.
*cough*
Pay them?
You kidding me? They do it for the love man.. the loooove.
The main developers are all professionals working for Corporations.
They have money to subsidize this “love.”
I was about to set up a pledgie campaign as was done for the libre graphics meeting, but I didn’t find a paypal adress for the X.org project.
ok, found something, so please lets collect bugs that are important, so we can collect money for those.
http://www.x.org/wiki/StarvingDevs?highlight=(paypal)
When its counted in days not months or years then its not bad. you can’t say six and half month and it sound late anymore when everything seems to go past its deadline KDE; OS X; and my personal favorite Vista.
Its strange that releases that are regular like say linux are not hailed with the positives.
The summary is as usual overly critical, and the whole money offer thing is shameful.
The reality is since X became more modular releases like this matter less. What does matter is that this release has had some compelling features dropped. Although I suspect they will crop up in experimental form in a variety of distributions. Like pulseaudio did before it was truly ready, and we are talking months not years (touch wood) before they are released formally.
That is not to say that this is not a time for reflection, and look at what is working and what didn’t, but its a long way from the xfree86 days may they never return.
the whole money offer thing is shameful.
What’s the difference between raising money via a fund and the way in which much of the rest of Linux is funded, by corporations paying the salaries of developers, whether it’s the kernel, Gnome, KDE or a host of other things, Mysql for example? Linux moved on from the basement boys a long time ago.
[q]When its counted in days not months or years then its not bad. you can’t say six and half month and it sound late anymore when everything seems to go past its deadline KDE; OS X; and my personal favorite Vista.[/]
What the complaining is about isn’t the lateness; most people can handle a bit of lateness. The issue is the fact that it was shipped 200 days late and the still has a mountain of show stoppers/blockers. I’m sorry, but that is completely unacceptable. Why even have th classification of ‘blocker’ when its not even going to be taken seriously.
What annoys me the most is the number of distributions who contribute nothing back to address bugs that exista accross all platforms. Each distribution only seems concerned about their ‘neck of the woods’ which ends up leaving massive chunk of code in the middle with bugs that never get addressed, because it doesn’t fit into any of the distribution camp (the platform independent code).
What there need to be is for the established vendors to get together and create a Xorg consortium where people work on all the code, not just the code relating to their neck of the woods. Unless the ‘neglected code’ gets a make over, these kinds of issues will continue creeping to the forefront of an already problematic release process.
Edited 2008-06-11 07:21 UTC
I’m sorry but you can’t really decide this. You didn’t pay for X (not directly at least) and have absolutely no right to demand any quality or release style. Unless you contributed to it, you have NO absolutely NO right to demand anything.
Well, in this case X also has NO absolutely NO right to be taken seriously for any system other than the adventurous hobbyist’s one. *shrug*
So when you disagree with someone you deduct points and make a smart allack remark rather than actually addressing the issues that were raised.
Mate, starting acting your age, not your shoe size; this website is getting as pathetic and juvinile as a combined version of digg, slashdot and kryo5hin.
Edited 2008-06-11 08:42 UTC
Isn’t Fedora 9 using a beta of 1.5, the version that broke compatibility with Nvidia drivers? Will they downgrade to 1.4. It is funny how I started using Ubuntu since it worked better on the eeepc and now I finding less hassles with it than Fedora 9. I feel a little disloyal since I have used Fedora since version 6. But I guess if you find something that works better for you it makes sense to change.
Why would they downgrade? It’s not like they didn’t know precisely what’d happen when they chose to release with the new server, only thing up in the air was how long it’d take the hardware folks to get off their lazy asses and release drivers.
But hey, if *buntu’s working better for ya, more power to you.
Not this old chestnut again.
nVidia are known to support versions of X Server within a couple of weeks or so of a major distribution starts supporting it.
Those couple of weeks are over, nVidia released their driver. Get. Over. It.
On the other hand it is also that same X Server (and newer Mesa, DRM) that allow R5xx standard hardware to run 3d/compiz (using updates that are in testing repository, soon to go into stable) using free drivers.
Swings and roundabouts. Some people prefer Ubuntu, some Fedora. Some find one more stable/faster, some another.
But hey, if *buntu’s working better for ya, more power to you.
Thanks, I appreciate your support. The choice to try it out on my eeepc was more of a forced choice. I just couldn’t get the same functionality with drivers and such from the eeedora spin. When I installed the eeeXuntu version with XFCE as a destop I was amazed that everything just worked. Wifi with madwifi, Cheese was working witht the built in video. I was just blown away by awesomeness of it. There was also more forum support for it which allowed me to tweak it easily. I am still kind of a reluctant convert. But damn, it is good stuff.
“The main developers are all professionals working for Corporations.
They have money to subsidize this “love.”
Just because programmers are working for major corporations doesn’t mean they wouldn’t appreciate a little $$$ for work they’re doing in their spare time…especially intricate and important work that, say, runs the entire visual experience for *NIX based operating systems? Come on folks, we’re all using this technology so let’s put our money where our mouths is and donate some freaking cash to these guys!!!
The skillsets gleened from these collaborative projects increase their valuation to these corporations and other head hunters opening up higher salary routes for them. They also can realize a vision and start their own companies.
I’ve seen it more than once that donations to developers who are working on the project for free shows real gratitude in a way that a simple “Thank you.” email can not.
A developer that I work with recently received his first donation ($50) for his work on a free project. Prior to this, he had received many “thank you’s” in forums and email. The donation encouraged him more than all the thanks. It wasn’t the money though – it was the truth behind it. A hand written thank you letter would have had the same impact. Someone cared enough to say “I appreciate your work, and I am willing to prove it.”
In the day where there are corporate dollars helping developers focus on developing why has X fallen so far behind on it’s goals?
Is there too much focus on the end result (ie, compiz, plasma) rather than the the basis of the entire visual experience? I for one would much rather put my money into X than into wobbly windows. (as fun as that it.
)
Leaving bugs unsolved and dropping features doesn’t sound like a great way to improve the standing of open source software.
Most core X developers are not ‘doing it in their spare time’, they’re paid (by various companies, including Intel, most major distro vendors, etc…) to work on X.
Someone above hit the nail on the head: X releases just aren’t so important now we don’t need an entire new release just to update some driver or other. This is more a reflection of the fact that X modularity has been such a success than anything more worrying.
Let the Compiz-Fusion team take it over. If X is barely staying alive and hardly developed then maybe integrate it into their code.
I’m not sure if that’s logistically possible, but it’s an idea. Better than a pretty important piece of code just stagnating hardly touched.
I’m not just saying this because I don’t like compiz but that’s not exactly possible (as far as I know). There is a difference between an X server and a window manager.
Edited 2008-06-11 23:55 UTC
Yet another idiotic moron talking his ass.
If it weren’t for X, you wouldn’t have your fancy effects in compiz.
Go get a clue.
Don’t call me a moron. When did I say compiz can work without a x server?
Please learn some English before you make idiotic replies. All I said was that you need a window manager that works on top of Xserver and not be the same process.
Edited 2008-06-14 11:27 UTC