companies contributing to X [was: Re: Respository vandalism by root at ...fd.o]

[Luc Verhaegen]

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 02:56:32PM -0700, Matt Dew wrote:
> > But you also might want to consider that i was at a hardware vendor two
> > weeks ago, and i had to listen to their main engineer calling
> > contributing directly to X a waste of time, and that they rather fix
> > the versions their customers ship, and hand the patches to their
> > customers directly, never bothering to submit to X directly. They rather
> > implement stuff, hand it to their customers, as they know that their
> > code will not be accepted, and that it will be reinvented a few weeks or
> > months later. Then they go and use the reimplementation afterwards, and
> > save a lot of manpower and frustration in the process. Despite all my
> > personal feelings about free software and the likes, I had absolutely
> > nothing to counter, anything i could even try to throw up against that
> > would either be completely irrelevant and meek, or a lie.
> 
> This I'm curious about.   Are there more companies that feel it's
> too-hard/not-worth-while for companies to contribute stuff to Xorg?
> I know the linux kernel has this issue, but is X's contribution
> difficulty larger?
> 
> I ask out of complete curiosity, not trying to stir any pot.
> Matt

Yes, a mail like this will get them all to come clean and tell you, 
publically, that they do not want to contribute back, and then list
all the reasons why.

That sounds like a good thing for a commercial company to do.

Luc Verhaegen.