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Should X 7.1 still be testing only because of closed source drivers (ati/nvidia)?
Yes!
55%
 55%  [ 254 ]
No!
37%
 37%  [ 172 ]
I don't care!
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 6%  [ 28 ]
Total Votes : 454

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R!tman
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 26, 2006 5:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

batistuta wrote:
VinzC wrote:
Implicitly closed to me.

Yeah.... R!tman should mark it as [solved] now :lol:

LOL
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slycordinator
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 26, 2006 10:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

boroshan wrote:
VinzC wrote:
Morality: while we were all arguing wether good or bad, wether should or shouldn't, wether must or mustn't, wether ethical or political... drivers have come, that finally address the big problem that yielded this discussion. 8)

well.. I dare say some of us would argue that the big problem was never so much the closed driver's incompatibility so much as it was the way in which that problem was addressed. But I've no particular wish to re-open that particular debate right now.

By all means, let's consider this one closed


Considering the amount of fairly pointless arguing both of us did w/ each other... I started to chuckle a bit when you said this. We DEFINITELY need not go down that road again. :lol:
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 26, 2006 10:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

slycordinator wrote:

Considering the amount of fairly pointless arguing both of us did w/ each other... I started to chuckle a bit when you said this. We DEFINITELY need not go down that road again. :lol:

There were certainly times when the quality of the debate between the two of us could have been higher :D

I like to think my responses are normally a little more considered than that. Too much time on Slashdot toasting trolls, perhaps, leading me into bad habits. There's a .sig message in there somewhere...
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slycordinator
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 26, 2006 11:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The last sentence of your sig reminds me of those Yakov Smirnoff jokes... only containing actual wit.
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madman2003
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 10:09 pm    Post subject: Has the social contract lost value? Reply with quote

Recently with the ABI change from xorg 7.0 to 7.1, it has become painfully obvious that gentoo does depend on non-free software in the form of binary gpu drivers. The social contract of gentoo states:

"However, Gentoo will never depend upon a piece of software or metadata unless it conforms to the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser General Public License, the Creative Commons - Attribution/Share Alike or some other license approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI)."

This was ignored for the sake of convience, that can be considered distrurbing. Is it perhaps not a better idea to built a facility which can inform people of non-free software problems into portage should they stand in the way of progress or natural events as they would have unfolded, had it not been for the piece of non-free software. In the case of the drivers giving additional information about a block and avoid a flood of "help, my system broke" posts. At which point people themselves could have chosen to hold back progress or remove the non-free driver.

Any thoughts on this subject?
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Headrush
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 10:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Why does it depend, you don't have to use those drivers and can have a perfectly running system.

I think your last paragraph seems to run on and is hard to follow. Maybe if you edit it and clarify it a little better more people will understand.
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Carlo
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 11:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gentoo doesn't depend. Lot's of users depend. You can always choose not to use those binary drivers. Gentoo will leave you the choice and you will always be able to build Gentoo from sources without depending on some binary blob. Your interpretation of the social contract is not what it implies.
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

While I admire the gentoo social contract, and personally try to run as much true OSS as I can (which is everything except the nvidia drivers on one system), I agree with a recent statement by ESR:
Quote:
“We need to be prepared to go to the rights holders for these proprietary codecs and say, we’ll give you money, give us a license,”

The fact is that there is lots of software out there that would be nice to have on Linux without either 1) waiting years for a version that only half works and 2) isn't legal to run in all countries.

I'm not sure if this will spark a big flame war or not (a flame war is not my goal), but interesting point nonetheless.

Here is a link to a slashdot article about the ESR interview:
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/25/1926250
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 5:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bloody, there is very few things that we depend on. GCC, nope, GLIBC, nope...ati and nvidia drivers nope. Please get the story straight on what "depending" on something is. New versions of xorg haven't gone stable because users choose to decide to use binary, and because we give you that choice we need to support those who make that decision.

So please don't talk about the social contract being useless as we "supossedly depend on it because of your definition of depend"
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 6:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There was a whole bloody thread on this...

Look, X 7.1 was in Portage; it was marked ~x86/~amd64. Big deal. 7.0 probably spent longer masked - and it's not like you couldn't install that package as ~x86 if you were using another video card...

It's still unstable (on those archs at least) - does that mean there are other unresolved bugs with it, or just that the devs haven't swapped it yet?
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 7:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Archangel1 wrote:
There was a whole bloody thread on this...

X 7.1 still testing on x86/amd64 because of BINARY drivers?
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 7:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

mark_alec wrote:
Archangel1 wrote:
There was a whole bloody thread on this...

X 7.1 still testing on x86/amd64 because of BINARY drivers?

And now merged into this thread.
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madman2003
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 10:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I just noticed that newer (and in my eyes better versions, which i used for more than a month before new drivers came) xorg versions were becoming stable everywhere except on x86 and x86_64. This is a great danger of non-free software, i would prefer that people got a warning message (a block with explanation) that they should either choose themselves to hold back progress or remove the piece of non-free software. In this case the drivers.
There are times when freedom is more important than convience. I use the nvidia-drivers when they don't hinder free software, otherwise i go without them for a while. That was a choice i made. Gentoo however chose to take the easy way out and the most convienent solution was chosen. This is wrong in my eyes, let the user know why something blocks(thus avoiding lots of posts with questions about the block) and let them choose.
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Matteo Azzali
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 10:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

madman2003 wrote:
I just noticed that newer (and in my eyes better versions, which i used for more than a month before new drivers came) xorg versions were becoming stable everywhere except on x86 and x86_64. This is a great danger of non-free software, i would prefer that people got a warning message (a block with explanation) that they should either choose themselves to hold back progress or remove the piece of non-free software. In this case the drivers.
There are times when freedom is more important than convience. I use the nvidia-drivers when they don't hinder free software, otherwise i go without them for a while. That was a choice i made. Gentoo however chose to take the easy way out and the most convienent solution was chosen. This is wrong in my eyes, let the user know why something blocks(thus avoiding lots of posts with questions about the block) and let them choose.


True, indeed. But you should also warn people that removing closed source drivers will result in holding back progress
of a whole lot of frontier software for linux: opengl accelerated software (can it be blender/sharpconstruct/denormgen/XSI/
mudbox or almost any game with real opengl acceleration), as there are no complete* open source openGL drivers
at the moment. But you can still prefer speeding-up xorg/xgl evolution moving back the real 3D development to prehistorical
ages to get some 3d eyecandies in your desktop.

(*: ati r200-r300 has not complete OpenGL support, as you may check in this forum there are lots of issues in wine and
various issues in 3D apps, where binary drivers work smoothly. The forum is filled with post like this one,
and now I think they don't even need an answer as is wasted time.
Also please remember that ati r200-r300 aren't anymore on sale: there are definitely no opengl open source drivers for
Ati X1000 or Nvidia 7000 series graphic cards that are currently in the shops. and I think this would hold back
progress much more than anything else, face the truth but if no x86-x86_64 user could install linux there would be 80-90%
less people here and a minimum of 50-60% less linux developers,as these are by far the majority of archs in the world).
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legine
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 12:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The hole Issue is about that the drivers are closed right?
Now the Problem is fixed. NVIDIA and ATI have updated their drivers to the new ABI and we all be happy again.
Hmm, sidenote. On the NVIDIA Forum I read that Nvidia did suggest changes but not to the ABI. And they said something like they had problems with the change to the new ABI. So Gentoo devs took the right decision in leaving the HW support the opportunity to get up with Open source development.

Quote:
This is wrong in my eyes, let the user know why something blocks(thus avoiding lots of posts with questions about the block) and let them choose.

I this case it was all in the weekly newsletter month ago. At least for me that was enough Information to know whats up. Of course I am not on the bleeding front and thats why I have found out right in time, if the timeing could be better needs to be discussed :)
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 4:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

But not everyone reads those newsletters (i don't all the time). Non-free is a nice bonus, but should never dictate the path of gentoo. That's my objection to this whole event. Let the users directly choose what is more important to them, but do not act for months like all is well from a portage point of view (stable branch). Delaying the drivers doesn't make nvidia/ati more inclined to speed things up. I also think it's critical to get reasonable free drivers for video hardware. I'm following development of nouveau closely and doing testing/bug reporting in an early stage, because i would prefer free drivers at the expense of (a little) performance. I lived without 3d accel for 1-1.5 months when i switched to xorg 7.1 (xorg 7.0 had strange memory consumption for me), i'm sure there are people who can't live without 3d, but many who can for a while. Every distro delayed xorg 7.1, because of non-free drivers and that is not a good sign.
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

madman2003 wrote:
Every distro delayed xorg 7.1, because of non-free drivers and that is not a good sign.

LOL, name one!
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 9:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fedora Core.
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madman2003
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 10:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Arch linux.

EDIT: I may have overstated, but the distro's that had plans to include it didn't. For example xorg-7.1 now hit testing on arch linux, now that drivers are available.
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 11:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

madman2003 wrote:
I'm sure there are people who can't live without 3d, but many who can for a while. Every distro delayed xorg 7.1, because of non-free drivers and that is not a good sign.


1) How much is "a while"? Can you tell me in how many years the Opengl accelerated drivers for x1000 and 7000 series
will be "mature"? Actually those for r200 and r300 aren't..... Do linux user should be forced to use only obsolete hardware,
or live just in 2D as other system users did back in 1995 (a 10 years leap back)?

2) There are people thinking that closed-sources should be just removed/blocked. It's not that peoples "can't live" without 3d,
is just that linux would be useless to them. Imagine that for some similar issue your 3-4 favourites applications couldn't
work anymore in linux (and no equivalent could work). What would you do? Would you return to a linux "free as free in
words only" some years later, when those apps could return working?

3) How many months before the ABI change/Xorg-7.1 release the devs contacted the video cards manufacturers warning
about the change? Even Microsoft (and I have nothing else of nice to say about them) warn/inform their
partners with full details about similar changes some months before releasing....
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 1:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

R!tman wrote:
madman2003 wrote:
Every distro delayed xorg 7.1, because of non-free drivers and that is not a good sign.

LOL, name one!

LOL, I can name a lot, Arch Linux (it was even said, that was the reason by the devs), Fedora Core, Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo etc... I can go on but won't. 8)
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 6:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kensai wrote:
R!tman wrote:
madman2003 wrote:
Every distro delayed xorg 7.1, because of non-free drivers and that is not a good sign.

LOL, name one!

LOL, I can name a lot, Arch Linux (it was even said, that was the reason by the devs), Fedora Core, Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo etc... I can go on but won't. 8)

I'm pretty sure you're wrong concerning at least Debian. As Debian doesn't even include any binary stuff, including nvidia and ati drivers, I very much doubt the devs would block anything because of things they don't even support ;-).
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 8:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
But not everyone reads those newsletters (i don't all the time).

Well maybe you should think then over it. the GWN is the place were Gentoo announces stuff like that. ;)

Quote:
i'm sure there are people who can't live without 3d, but many who can for a while. Every distro delayed xorg 7.1, because of non-free drivers and that is not a good sign.

Well that means you are wrong. If that would be so, users on any distro would have complained about it. But only those who dont use 3d complain...

Quote:
3) How many months before the ABI change/Xorg-7.1 release the devs contacted the video cards manufacturers warning
about the change? Even Microsoft (and I have nothing else of nice to say about them) warn/inform their
partners with full details about similar changes some months before releasing....

I am sure MS does coordinate the release of changes with the manufacturer. So it only seems the manufacturer would make it in time. You have to see that on MS a none working graphic driver due to a MS API change would be MS fault not the one of the manufacturer.

Quote:
Delaying the drivers doesn't make nvidia/ati more inclined to speed things up. I also think it's critical to get reasonable free drivers for video hardware.

The reason to delay bc of cs drivers is undoubtfull the right decision. I think that because we would do the same thing when the drivers would have been open. (And if they were open we wouldnt have the discussions even if the drivers took a month longer to the change in the ABI!)
I think the Xorg people should put more effort in coordinating such efforts with the driverproject affected. I do believe that at this point no HW manufacturer sees any benifit in Open Source and thats why they close the drivers. If you want open source drivers, you need to gain their trust (we do not have that) and you need to show them that open the drivers would be benificial to them. Currently the drawbacks are much higher then the benifits from OS driver devlopment.
For reasons see:
Matteo Azzali posts.
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madman2003
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 9:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Matteo Azzali wrote:
madman2003 wrote:
I'm sure there are people who can't live without 3d, but many who can for a while. Every distro delayed xorg 7.1, because of non-free drivers and that is not a good sign.


1) How much is "a while"? Can you tell me in how many years the Opengl accelerated drivers for x1000 and 7000 series
will be "mature"? Actually those for r200 and r300 aren't..... Do linux user should be forced to use only obsolete hardware,
or live just in 2D as other system users did back in 1995 (a 10 years leap back)?

2) There are people thinking that closed-sources should be just removed/blocked. It's not that peoples "can't live" without 3d,
is just that linux would be useless to them. Imagine that for some similar issue your 3-4 favourites applications couldn't
work anymore in linux (and no equivalent could work). What would you do? Would you return to a linux "free as free in
words only" some years later, when those apps could return working?

3) How many months before the ABI change/Xorg-7.1 release the devs contacted the video cards manufacturers warning
about the change? Even Microsoft (and I have nothing else of nice to say about them) warn/inform their
partners with full details about similar changes some months before releasing....


In my case, a while was a little over a month. Xorg 7.0 had some problems for me, 7.1 didn't. My reasoning is that if all users are confronted with the downsides of non-free drivers, then they will at least be aware of it, instead of coverering it up. It might also give nvidia/ati a reason to speed things up a bit, because there is actually no good reason to delay a minor change for months, besides having no reason to do it (no distro was really using it and that's because the drivers aren't there, vicious circle).
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Matteo Azzali
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 9:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

madman2003 wrote:

In my case, a while was a little over a month. Xorg 7.0 had some problems for me, 7.1 didn't. My reasoning is that if all users are confronted with the downsides of non-free drivers, then they will at least be aware of it, instead of coverering it up. It might also give nvidia/ati a reason to speed things up a bit, because there is actually no good reason to delay a minor change for months, besides having no reason to do it (no distro was really using it and that's because the drivers aren't there, vicious circle).


You needed xorg-7.1, ok. Do you know the /etc/portage/package.keyword mechanism? Is so difficult to put in there the
packages you needed? Or do you think that 3D users in ~ branch didn't used package.mask to prevent xorg-7.1 from
compiling on their system? Whenever there are large groups of peoples with different needings there are developers
choiches to try to make much possible people happy, and is still 100% sure someone will complain. Sad.
ABI change isn't a minor change, at least for Nvidia they specified that just recompiling the drivers wasn't enough
(probably there's some assembly involved,and in this case they had to modify the asm sources for every supported platform
and for legacy drivers).And you can be sure that before any drivers release there's some testing as they don't want
that users boards implode for a distraction error.....

Also in the current situation (where directX 10 graphics archs -r600 and G80 -are round the corner, and isn't 100% sure
those boards will be easily compatible with OpenGL) I would avoid to push/force manufacturers to do anything, in the hope
they'll continue to support linux community, as we still haven't viable alternatives for any of the boards in the shops.

In the end I would like just to remember that ATI x1000 boards owners waited more than 6 months to have drivers,
and there wasn't all this fuzz about.
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