This is a totally bullshit way of managing a FOSS project. You should never remove working code from a FOSS project if someone is already maintaining it and that someone represents a major chunk of your users. I hate that Ubuntu guys are moving away from X/Wayland (so suddenly and in a close-is way), but treating them like this indirectly is wrong. We got to play fair with the FOSS eco-system.
Intel Says No to Ubuntu's New Display Server
41–50 of 97 posts
Re: Intel Says No to Ubuntu's New Display Server
#42According to Phornoix, Chris Wilson of Intel wrote this in a Git commit: We do not condone or support Canonical in the course of action they have chosen, and will not carry XMir patches upstream. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQ1NjY Phoronix's link to said commit does not work, so it is hard to infer context. But I would assume that "the course of action they have chosen" refers to working on Mi…
""the course of action they have chosen" refers to working on Mir in the first place rather than contributing to Wayland. If that's the case, can't say I really blame Intel." I absolutely blame Intel. Whatever you think about Ubuntu's decision to make their own X server, it is childish to not include working patches for purely political reasons. It's not like Ubuntu is asking Intel to do their work for them. So Canon…
> Whatever you think about Ubuntu's decision to make their own X server, it is childish to not include working patches for purely political reasons.
Absolutely not. Projects need to take a strong stance on what to include or not because every piece of code in there needs to be maintained.
Re: Intel Says No to Ubuntu's New Display Server
#43For those interested, this comment is caused by this commit revert: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-intel/com... So originally the XMir support was merged in, then reverted on instructions from Higher Ups. I can't really blame them, if they make driver changes Intel would have to adapt the XMir code to cope with them.
What is the reasoning for putting this code in the video driver? The "Theory of Operation" comment in the merged-then-reverted code is insightful. Apparently, the code is supposed to figure out which parts of windows are damaged, and then tell the windowing system to do something about it. IMHO, windows are not a concept that should even exist in the video driver [1]. They should be entirely under control of the wind…
Not really informed here but I would venture a guess that 'perfect separation of concerns' causes a performance hit. In the backend web dev world you can usually suck that up by making the load parallelizable across servers, something you don't have the option of doing with code running locally. In other words, 'separation of concerns' is great until you hit a performance bottleneck, as you often do with any resource constrained system.
Re: Intel Says No to Ubuntu's New Display Server
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why I think licenses such as AGPL and GPLv3 are hurting open-source (and Free Software). The intentions behind them are good, but in practice they are used in parallel with commercial licenses that have nothing to do with open-source.
Wayland is not under such licences. It uses the MIT license.
I think bad_user is talking about Mir: it's licensed under GPLv3 [1].
Re: Intel Says No to Ubuntu's New Display Server
#45For those interested, this comment is caused by this commit revert: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-intel/com... So originally the XMir support was merged in, then reverted on instructions from Higher Ups. I can't really blame them, if they make driver changes Intel would have to adapt the XMir code to cope with them.
What is the reasoning for putting this code in the video driver? The "Theory of Operation" comment in the merged-then-reverted code is insightful. Apparently, the code is supposed to figure out which parts of windows are damaged, and then tell the windowing system to do something about it. IMHO, windows are not a concept that should even exist in the video driver [1]. They should be entirely under control of the wind…
"Reverting this commit seems like a sound technical decision to me."
Well, the commit message says:
Ordered-by: The Management.
Re: Intel Says No to Ubuntu's New Display Server
#46Choice is good, but for too long has open source been fighting among itself. I commend Intel for doing this. They're hardly alone after all, they're just joining Kde, Gnome, Enlightenment and all the other open source projects that embraced Wayland.
Re: Intel Says No to Ubuntu's New Display Server
#47Why would any party make such a hostile announcement in the FOSS scene? I'm not all that involved in that scene, but surely this approach is counter-productive? Especially if you can't back it with a sound technical reason.
IMHO, if it's a political decision, it's better to be upfront about it (as Intel was), instead of coming up with some technical excuse for it.
Re: Intel Says No to Ubuntu's New Display Server
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that what is happening here? Intel's explanation of "The Management" handing down orders doesn't imply technical reasons were the motivation. It's unclear. If there are technical reasons - like the one you mentioned - let's hear them, they might be valid.
Does anyone else see the "-The Management" comment as having more than a tinge of sarcasm? I think people are taking it a little too seriously.
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-intel/com...
Note "Ordered-by:" line, clearly intended to communicate Chris Wilson was ordered to do this, rather than doing it of his own accord.
Re: Intel Says No to Ubuntu's New Display Server
#49Political talks aside, it looks all good. Intel will develop code for Wayland (which potentially will be used in all but Ubuntu distros) and Ubuntu will be working on adding patches for XMir on their own since XMir will be used only in Ubuntu. Eventually either XMir will be proven better and more distros adopt it and then it will be more reasonable for Intel spend time on integrating drivers with XMir.
No real news here.
Re: Intel Says No to Ubuntu's New Display Server
#50There is one vendor using Mir. One. I don't blame Intel for not backing it.