End of year Xorg status rant

[Mark Linimon]

On Sat, Dec 31, 2016 at 03:41:46PM -0800, Matthew Macy wrote:
> There are people contributing patches that sit idly in Bugzilla
> indefinitely.

[I'm not addressing Matthew directly here; he already knows most of this]

And this is the key point: we need more committers.

If the folks in this thread (and the similar one about numerical
computation) saying "someone should do something!" worked towards being
committers, we would all be better off.

And, no, I don't believe that process is easy.

But what people don't appreciate is that the large number of moving parts
in the Ports Collection (times 7? architectures, times 4^W3 release branches)
creates something intricate.  There's a learning curve to being able to
commit something that doesn't break anything else; the curve gets steeper
the closer you get to the center of the infrastructure.

And this work is pretty close to the center.

(And never mind about trying to make all of that robust and consistent.)

What frustrates me is that people don't understand that the players I
know within FreeBSD *want* to have better graphics.  I have *never* heard
anyone say "just walk away from it".  It's a question of how we can get
there with the limited manpower we have available.

Finally, I do know of at least one person within FreeBSD whose stated
goal is to Make This Integration Happen in 2017.

But I'm not crazy enough to think it is going to happen this week.

mcl