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List:       xfree86-forum
Subject:    Re: [forum] XFree86 modularization
From:       Egbert Eich <eich () XFree86 ! Org>
Date:       2003-06-02 14:28:29
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David Dawes writes:
 > On Fri, May 09, 2003 at 02:26:58AM -0400, Noah Levitt wrote:
 > >On Thu, May 08, 2003 at 23:13:31 -0700, Torrey T. Lyons wrote:
 > >> 
 > >> Of course, this is just a specific example of problems from relying 
 > >> on external dependencies. If you have external dependencies, you are 
 > >> beholden to them with regards to which $PLATFORM's you can support 
 > >> and when bug fixes get integrated into your releases.
 > >
 > >Then maybe GNOME and KDE should distribute their own copies
 > >of XFree86, right?
 > 
 > Sure, why not?  Most OS vendors/distros do, and nobody can credibly
 > argue that this is a bad thing given that they have responsiblities to
 > their customer base and their own release schedules and feature set
 > priorities.
 > 

The modifications distros make to their versions of XFree86 are
greatly overestimated. 
The goal of every distro is to stay as close as possible with the 
version shipped by XFree86. Any vendor specific changes are usually 
held to a minimum. The biggest chunk of patches are bug fixes.

For the benefit of all distro maintainer prefer to see these
bug fixes - or a commonly agreed on fix for this bug - included 
in a release as soon as possible. For distro maintainers this reduces 
the burdon of carrying with them an increasing number of fixes 
sometimes even across releases and make the fix available to 
all XFree86 users.
Diverging binaries shipped by XFree86 and distros both increase the 
support load for XFree86 and distros. Considering the support requests
that come in thru xfree86@xfree86.org diverging versions would turn
support into a nightmare.

Egbert.


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