xf86CheckBeta() and friends

[Stuart Kreitman]

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.  
>
>As the code is open source, this can't force people to upgrade, but it can
>make it painful to continue running older code.
>
>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 
>  
>
^^completely working computer, ie no tech support call.

>valuable to most people than running 'approved' versions of software.  
>
>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.
>
>  
>

Its also pretty nasty to be the only user on the planet (or be an 
unfamiliar noobie, same thing)
with a problem, and the first or second time you ask for help, someone 
tells you you're wrong.

Then you just say fsck it, I'll run Y.

otoh, I don't know of any solaris os or X stuff that times out in this 
way, so this mechanism is not popular
at my company, which is migrating out from a completely closed source 
methodology.
I take the posture of learning, I know the least about open source or 
closed source, ie, I ask the dumb questions.


skk