On Fri, 1 Nov 2002, J. Imlay wrote: > I am just a casual reader on this list so I could be entirly wrong about > all this. > > I've read the thread that you started last spring, and I've been following > this one, and I sympathize with you on the problems with the acceleration > in X (it's down right unusable IMHO) but what I'm missing is what you are > actually trying to get at? > > The issue was brought up last spring, and appearantly nothing was done > about it. And the problem doesn't seem to be lack of a patch it's just > that someone (a mystery to me as well) doesn't seem to like to apply > patches from anyone but ... well I don't know. Only a few of the inside > guys get to change the code at all.
Speaking as someone in the "outer circle" (I'm on the private lists, but don't get to change the code) I think that the problem is that none one will commit a patch that they don't understand. We can't just make changes, however great, without considering what happens to people and programs which expect things to be the (broken) way they have always been. As a result, anyone who makes changes is expected to deal with any problems that show up because of their changes (there are two "interesting" threads on the main private list at the moment which could be said to be putting pressure on one of the big names becuase he is slow to deal with the consequences of some great new features). We don't have experts in every area, so some patches have to wait until somone has the time or inclination (we are mostly volunteers, remember) to understand them well enough to take responsibility for the consequences of the patch. While several people do commit changes submitted to the lists, there is only one person paid to integrate patches and generally "look after the code", anyone else who has a job is "adding features" or supporting hardware, or "developing the server", ie *writing* code. Few of these poeple seem to have the time to take on new areas of the code, and are more interested in improving the bit they know well. -- Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna _______________________________________________ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
