Modular X.org and the Unichrome forks.

[Luc Verhaegen]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 09:38:26AM +0100, Thomas Hellström wrote:
> Adam Jackson wrote:
> 
> >On Thursday 22 December 2005 13:10, Alan Cox wrote:
> > 
> >I have no desire to turn a choice among two drivers into a choice among 
> >three.  If Xorg ships effectively the stable branch of one or the other 
> >project, then we're creating driver number 3.  We _had_ to do this for 7.0 
> >because we had to have parity with 6.9.  Doing it again in the 7.1 
> >timeframe is mistake unless, and only unless, the driver we ship as part 
> >of the 7.1 katamari is clearly superior to either of the other two in 
> >terms of user experience.
> >
> I think the situation needs to be clarified, and X.org needs to make a 
> decision on how to proceed.
> 
> The openChrome project was not started by me, although I have been the 
> most active developer lately, but by the  people wanting continued 
> support for their Unichrome Pro chips and for XvMC. It is based on the 
> code currently in Xorg with some additions for backwards compatibility 
> and unstable development like EXA support and Xv DMA transfer. 
> Development is currently focusing on EXA HW composite acceleration and 
> XvMC mpeg4 acceleration.
> 
> The reason for almost all developers leaving the unichrome.sf.net 
> project one by one had very little to do with technical disagreement. 
> For those few interested in gossip, I think the Unichrome mailing list 
> archives are still open. It had more to do with people having enough of 
> and wanting to be nowhere near statements like this:
> 
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2005-December/011739.html
> 
> I still think all developers involved agree technically on where the 
> driver needs to go. There is a disagreement on how to get there, since 
> there are people prioritizing usability and people prioritizing code 
> cleanups no matter what price is paid.
> 
> Recapping what's been said previously in this thread everybody seems to 
> be favouring usability. This currently rules out replacing the existing 
> via driver with the unichrome driver since it, in addition to what's 
> been said earlier, also lacks support for Unichrome Pro modes, tv-out, 
> and Xv, the latter requiring quite some effort to fix. I think Alan Cox 
> clearly outlined what is going to happen if the via driver is removed 
> from head.
> 
> The other option (if conflicting commits are feared) is to appoint a 
> maintainer for the driver who OKs or denies the commits. I think it has 
> been pretty clear from the list discussions that there are to be no 
> usability reversions unless _really_ motivated. I'd happily accept any 
> qualified maintainer who agrees to follow those recommendations. Even Luc.
> 
> Finally, to Luc, If lack of hardware is the reason for not extending 
> your cleanups to Unichrome Pro, the offer of a CN400 board is still 
> there. No VIA money involved.
> 
> /Thomas
> 
What you said last time was: 
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=7004149&forum_id=38615

About the very last bit, you, and Ivor Hewitt and Andreas Robinson, 
should've thought about that before:
- You all criticised me for being that verbose about very much needed 
hardware donations (which i became after a release had been postponed 
for several weeks due to no-one having the hardware to test a serious 
problem report). Donations btw, which i have only ever been willing to 
accept from commercial users (i have sinned: the only hardware i didn't 
pay for my self is the discarded CH7019B daughterboard from an Acer 
Aspire 135x).
- You all so eagerly pounced on the resulting donations.
- You all left shortly after.

I'm sure that this sort of mudthrowing can continue for quite a long 
time. And i'm very sure that i can rebutt most of it in more lengthy and 
in the end pretty irrelevant ways.

Now, what i am not sure about is why you are so eager to keep things in 
tree. Surely openchrome.org is the most popular project, surely it has 
all the features your users want. What are you afraid of?

X is modular. I don't see us come to terms any time soon. This 
flamewar has gone on long enough. Maybe it's time to choose the option 
that is most acceptable to most people and go back to doing something 
useful.

Luc Verhaegen.