I have been reading this thread all evening and quite frankly it makes me sick to my stomach. I consider Fedora developers and users to be the cream of the crop of the Linux community. Unfortunately this thread has not shown that to be the case. I am horrified for any one who happens upon this thread via the mailing list archive as an example of what the Fedora community is about. I would like to make the following points in regard to this issue. 1. As a Fedora user who uses Fedora as a desktop machine and requires the bits that the proprietary binary Nvidia driver provides I am not a second class user. Individuals who have the ability to run OSS video drivers are not any better or worse then I am they just have different needs and requirements. 2. Demanding that a Red Hat employee who may or may not be paid to work on Fedora is not doing his job is distasteful. I have been involved in quite a few OSS projects over the years and OSS is about freedom. The freedom to work on what you find interesting or feel there is a need for. If an individual is not happy with how things are going the individual is free to make the changes they feel are important or help facilitate that change. OSS development is largely powered by volunteers. 3. The root issue is that Fedora shipped a prerelease version of Xorg that many are unhappy with. They are mainly unhappy with this fact because it shortens the time they can use Fedora 9 due to their hardware issues. This decision affected a portion of the user base. I hope that the thought and consideration went in to such a decision as this kind of Fedora backlash was expected. As geeks we always want the latest and greatest and Fedora 9 symbolizes that. This again does not make them second class users. 4. Not everyone is as up to date on what is and is not supported as we are. We must remember the little guy. The user who is just starting out with Linux or is still a novice. The user who runs the upgrade and expects everything to work as it did in Fedora 8. Fedora is a great distribution but we all know how FUD can overtake a great thing. 5. Expecting Fedora to cater to proprietary video card drivers is unrealistic. However it is not unrealistic to keep the user in mind when making such design decisions. More individuals were positively affected by the decision to include a prerelease version of Xorg then not. In the future I would recommend getting out in front of issues such as this as to prepare the user base. A subpoint under the Xorg portion of the Release Notes stating that version xx.yy of Nvidia drivers and version xx.yy of ATI drivers would not work with Fedora 9 I feel would have helped tremendously. Personally, this issue has made me want to get more involved in Fedora development. This is OSS and it is what we make of it. Thanks for reading, Erich -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
