X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules [LWN.net]

X11R7.1 (also known as X.org 7.1) was released back in May. It contains a number of useful new features, better 3D performance on a number of video adapters, and tons of fixes. It is, in general, the platform that X users probably want to be using. This release is not as widely used as it could be, however, and the associated story illustrates one of the costs of proprietary modules.

One of the developments merged into 7.1 was the AIGLX project, dedicated to the important goal of providing better eye candy for Linux users worldwide. Since this code had gone into the X.org mainline, the Fedora-based AIGLX developers decided that there was no reason to continue to maintain their own version. So the Fedora AIGLX repository stopped seeing updates; Fedora users wanting to use the current AIGLX code could get it straight from X.org 7.1.

The Fedora Core 5 distribution, however, shipped X.org 7.0. So, it was asked: would FC5 be updated to X.org 7.1? A major upgrade of this type might not be something all distributors would contemplate, but Fedora is supposed to move rapidly. As a matter of policy, Fedora tends to fix problems (and security issues in particular) by upgrading to the current release rather than by backporting fixes. So, back at the end of July, it was announced that there would be an X.org 7.1 update for Fedora Core 5.

Just one little problem stood in the way: the binary-only drivers from ATI and NVidia did not work with X.org 7.1 (ATI has since released an update). Perhaps, it was suggested, the X.org update could be postponed until such a time that the proprietary module vendors had released compatible versions? This idea was fairly strongly criticized on the mailing lists; Fedora is supposed to be a 100% free software distribution, and should not have to concern itself with the behavior of proprietary software vendors. Mike Harris, the Fedora X.org maintainer at that time (he has since retired), was quite clear on the subject:

Fedora does not support proprietary drivers at all, and never has, nor has any Red Hat OS that preceded it. Our OS products are not held hostage to the release schedule whims of 3rd party proprietary driver suppliers.

Part of the decision of choosing proprietary software, is making a conscious decision that you are held hostage by the vendor of that software to provide you with support for it. That unfortunate limitation should not expand to encompass all users of open source software. If that happens, everyone loses.

By this reasoning, everybody has lost. The Fedora advisory board met to discuss the issue; the resulting decision was that Fedora Core 5 would not be updated to X.org 7.1. The conclusion was that the interests of Fedora users using proprietary NVidia modules outweigh the interests of other users who would benefit from this update.

Needless to say, this decision has not been met with universal acclaim. One Fedora user asked:

If you were the owner of a company that had just announced plans to open source your drivers, would you feel you had made the right decision if a major linux distribution announced it had changed its mind about releasing the software that enabled your driver to run and delayed its shipment for two months *because* there were still vendors whose proprietary drivers were not updated?

The board has spoken, however, and the decision stands. Fedora users who are not up for the (sometimes hair-raising) experience of running from the development repository will have to wait for Fedora Core 6 to get X.org 7.1.

Lest anybody think that this is a Fedora-specific issue, a visit to this Gentoo forum discussion may be of interest. X.org 7.1 remains masked in Gentoo for the same reason - lack of proprietary vendor support - and over half of the people voting in the attached poll believe that situation should continue. Interestingly, only the x86 and amd64 architectures are being held back. The other Gentoo-supported architectures, for which NVidia and ATI modules are never available anyway, have moved forward to the current X.org release.

In both cases, distributors are acting in what they believe is the best interest of their users. Regardless of what one thinks of the outcome, it is encouraging that quite a bit of thought is clearly being put into the effects of changes on the user base. What is rather less encouraging is that the best interest of (at least) Fedora and Gentoo users is in the hands of proprietary module vendors, and that this dependency is imposing a cost on all users, whether they use the modules in question or not. These vendors should not have veto power over the release plans of free software distributions. One can only look forward to the day when current video hardware from all vendors can be used on 100% free systems.

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