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.
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Member since:2005-11-05
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.
Member since:2005-07-06
[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
Member since:2006-01-16
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.
Member since:
2006-03-12
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.