xf86CheckBeta() and friends

[Daniel Stone]

On Fri, Nov 12, 2004 at 07:46:15AM -0800, Stuart Kreitman wrote:
> I would like to see an explanation in the email archives that briefly
> explains what it is and why its undesireable. (tho the StrongBad
> argument was a chuckle)

If you compiled XFree86 with a certain set of flag (USE_FLAG or
something, and BETA_EXPIRY, ...), it would produce a binary that would
not work after a specified date.  This was used for *binary-only* beta
releases of XFree86, where they wanted to ensure that people would
upgrade after a certain date (i.e. planned release).  After this date,
the beta version would just exit(1).

It's bad because we don't want to walk this route.  It's circumventable
by just recompiling the thing (this scheme depended on no-one but the
gatekeepers having the source, and man if that isn't the worst idea for
X.Org), and keeping it around despite the chance to remove it would just
show bad intentions, IMHO.

So, in a nutshell:
  * only useful for the situation where the X.Org server is
    closed-source
  * hopefully that never happens
  * shows bad intentions towards our users by timebombing the code
  * sucks

-- 
Daniel Stone                                            <daniel at freedesktop.org>
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