xf86CheckBeta() and friends

[Daniel Stone]

On Fri, Nov 12, 2004 at 02:51:38PM -0500, Keith Packard wrote:
> Around 10 o'clock on Nov 12, Daniel Stone wrote:
> > It's bad because we don't want to walk the closed-source route.
> 
> While I may agree with you in fact, I disagree with this particular 
> arguement.  It has nothing to do with closed vs open source; the reality 
> is that most people *don't* rebuild X for themselves, and the 'beta' flag 
> provides distributions with a mechanism for encouraging people to get the 
> released version of software instead of continuing to use potentially 
> buggy software.  

Mmm, but it just has the whole vendor lock-in attitude to mine eyes.  As
I said to Stuart, I understand the intent, and there's totally valid
reasoning behind it (it's rather well-intentioned), I just really,
incredibly, dislike the effects.

> As the code is open source, this can't force people to upgrade, but it can
> make it painful to continue running older code.

As opposed to the screaming 'it's been longer than six months, upgrade,
you fool' warnings in the log already? :)

> And, to that, all I can say is that whoever thought of this clearly never 
> spent a lot of time doing tech support.  A working computer is far more 
> valuable to most people than running 'approved' versions of software.  

Or possibly too much time doing tech support, but none with timebombed
software.  'Yes, fixed in <insert version here>' gets repetitive after a
while (something about releases many years old ...).

> Having your machine stop functioning because of some arbitrary time bomb 
> is the worst kind of software torture; worse in many ways than dongles and 
> other nasty closed-source tactics.

Agreed; and given that that's the intent of this code ...

Thing is, I want to be able to keep giving out Linux CDs as long as they
basically work.  If this means sarge or warty or whatever still works in
two years' time -- great, I'll give it to my grandmother should she ever
need it and not have to worry about a call about no graphical mode
because something's too old.

It just stinks to me of the vendor lock-in upgrade cycle, and I
fundamentally dislike it.  If the code stays in, I hope to god it is at
least never, ever used (it certainly won't be in any vendor builds I'm
responsible for).

-- 
Daniel Stone                                            <daniel at freedesktop.org>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg/attachments/20041112/ae99048a/attachment.pgp>