revert b59757e468227127b91fff17b523da4deec8b04d

[Aaron Plattner]

On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 02:56:39AM +0300, Daniel Stone wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 04:43:15PM -0700, Aaron Plattner wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 01:56:06AM +0300, Daniel Stone wrote:
> > > > Old Signed by an unknown key
> 
> gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-key b2808094

Sorry, broken MTA.

> > > imposing an additional support burden on X.Org.  Why would we ever
> > > recommend -- and use by default -- something which we cannot support?
> > > We can barely even support nv as it is.  Having NVIDIA's business
> > > decision to write a closed-source driver imposed on a volunteer group of
> > > open source developers is rather distasteful.
> > 
> > Driver autoconfiguration doesn't impose anything on anybody.
> 
> Good, so we don't need this change then.

Huh?  You'll have to explain your reasoning here because that doesn't seem to
follow at all.

> > It simply tries to choose the correct default for the most people.
> 
> 'Correct' is wonderfully subjective.  'Correct' for people using git
> master is almost certainly not nvidia, objectively given the ABI breaks.

This is not the problem you're making it out to be.  If the server ABI
isn't supported, loading the driver will fail and the server will fall
back automatically.

> You could also argue that putting this patch in reaches such a miniscule
> proportion of users who have already gone through the ordeal of actually
> building our software -- not quite as difficult as creating an
> xorg.conf, I admit -- rather than reaching the distributions.
> 
> Some distributions already go out of the way to ship the proprietary
> driver, so surely they'd be more than willing to modify the autoconfig
> list in the servers they also ship.

If you really want to push that off to the distros, I guess that's
reasonable, though unfortunate.

> > This includes (or
> > should include, in my view), users who install 3rd-party drivers. 
> 
> I can understand how you would form that view.

I do personally use a 3rd-party driver, yes.

> > Am I
> > wrong in thinking that the supported drivers are the ones that are
> > distributed on xorg.freedesktop.org and included in the katamaris?
> 
> More or less.  There is one special case, which is the via nonsense:
> given that we don't ship _any_ working, open-source, Via driver
> (especially tragic as it's purely social, rather than technical, failure
> -- ironic, as it's usually the converse).  NVIDIA hardware is already
> well supported by an open source driver that's in git and distributed as
> part of the katamari.  If this is not fit for purpose and you have an
> alternate proposal, I'm all ears.
> 
> Of course, if you want to rename nvidia to nv, then this patch would
> just magically work when people installed the proprietary driver.  After
> all, having five drivers called nv_drv.so can't be too much worse than
> four called nvidia_drv.so, no?
> 
> > > Please revert, as we do not, cannot, and will not support binary-only
> > > drivers.  You're welcome to attempt to convince distributions of its
> > > merit, however: it's a free world.
> > 
> > I'll revert it if you really think that's what's best for users, but I
> > strongly believe that that would be a step backward in the quality of the
> > server.
> 
> Yes, I do, and IRC seems to show a consensus around those who are
> around, bar two.
> 
> Please, revert it.

Okay, I guess.