Release The Driver, Or Step Aside

[Qaridarium]

LOL, now that he's gone... you're such a hero... You better watch out in 2 weeks gordboy will be back to give you a verbal whipping

Of course it's Michael's forum and he can do what he wants. But I didn't see anything warranting a ban for gordboy. Banning someone just because other people call you to do so leaves kind of a bad taste in the mouth.

Besides I've found this thread quite entertaining, and judging by the number of views I'm not the only one. Hmm, isn't phoronix's business model based on advertising revenues (read: page views?)

"you're such a hero"

yes... i write a lot of shit but never ever so so so so so so anti-social like this!

"now that he's gone."

yes i read this threat very often and i can't believe this shit...

this man believes he is a 'hero' he believes he can do it better!

the hole FGLRX/catalyst team can't do it better over my last 3-4 ati-linux years now-

the open-source driver runs like a dream !

like a Switzerland-clock (and the fglrx not!)

and this 'Guy' talk about release a driver or step aside...

the FGLRX team release a driver every 30 days and every 30 days the driver is shit again!

[bridgman]

For me the question is what are you trying to say. And since you are one of the most calm and pondering forum dwellers, I do assume that it was not due to malice that you left in the air that bit of information, and that you actually were trying to add something of relevance with it. You will understand that nobody would care if Gordboy sent you some love private messages...

I was responding to the comments that participants could "just ignore the thread". PMs are harder to ignore because you have to delete them to stop your mailbox from filling up.

I guess my point is that I don't think Gordboy's posts on their own were ban-worthy, but that wasn't the reason for the ban anyways AFAIK. Most forum moderation is done via warnings, which is good - but when warnings are ignored what should the moderator do next ? Another warning ?

As long as we are all voting on this I would vote for lifting the ban, not because it was wrong, but because even a one day ban is enough to send a clear "don't fsck with the moderator" message. It would be great if there was some kind of action a moderator could take between warning and ban, but I don't know what that is.

The best I came up with was changing the text under the user's name to read "very close to being banned"

[benmoran]

I think the temporary ban was completely warranted. I say this having never replied to one of his posts.

Maybe to people who don't speak English as a first language, he might not seem that bad. The fact is, however, that the wording in all of his posts was rude and abrasive. He didn't say all that much that was directly and literally offensive, but the nuance was always there in every post.

If a person is simply rude or antisocial, it shows more. In his case, he was deliberately trying to ruffle feathers. His choice of words were slyly chosen, and I feel intended only to ruffle feathers.

[xeros]

KMS has only be out of staging in the kernel for a couple of months. Before that point it wasn't something that was in any way ready for a release. Like I'm sure you guys love closed source development, and you seem to confuse access to the code during development with access to the code when released. Just because we've put code out for people to see and use, it doesn't mean its released in the "closed-source" development methodology. We are developing the code in public, and we get feedback from people interested in using it. Though we still have to do a proper release process when we are happy with the code, which we are doing now.

Its almost like you don't understand how open source differs from closed.

Dave.

Sorry of little OT here but...
How is KMS vs UMS development? I mean, is UMS still in development?
I, for example have two R3xx graphic cards and my motherboard BIOS initializes only one card at boot time and now I've upgraded Kubuntu to 10.04 with KMS... I might be wrong with thinking, but... everything works great with first card on KMS and second with UMS (second X-server started from KDM). So I wonder how long configurations like mine will be supported?

[that guy]

In his case, he was deliberately trying to ruffle feathers.

Have to agree here. Since the very first lines of the first post, the thread was meant to be aggressive and demeaning. The ban was warranted, and shouldn't be lifted just because people like the drama.

[mcgreg]

As I said earlier, ignoring that guy would probably solve the issue. Additionally, the thread could have simply been closed
It wasn't about any technical thing but just a quite rude demand of a(n) (upset) person.

This is an unfortunate issue that this all went kind of out of control.
IMHO banning should really be the very very last possibility to act against somebody.
OK, I don't know what he said in those PMs and of course I believe everybody that this is really annoying.

I would suggest to lift this ban now. I think everybody had enough time to calm down about this thread.

[curaga]

While I very much disagree with how gordboy presented it, I do agree with his main point.

A full year without a proper release is not how a package should be handled. Definitely not a driver.

[Ex-Cyber]

While I very much disagree with how gordboy presented it, I do agree with his main point.

A full year without a proper release is not how a package should be handled. Definitely not a driver.

They didn't go a full year without a proper release, just a full year between the non-KMS release and the KMS one (during which the kernel side was being nailed down as well). They were making 6.12.x releases in the interim.

[marek]

While I very much disagree with how gordboy presented it, I do agree with his main point.

A full year without a proper release is not how a package should be handled. Definitely not a driver.

The thing is a guy that doesn't pay developers for their work has no right to demand anything. This is not a ******* charity.

The "unreleased" driver has been in Ubuntu since 9.10 and even longer in Fedora, and *now* people want an official release, not realizing they have probably been using the driver for *half a year*.

-Marek

[amphigory]

I think he was barking up the wrong tree but he did come up with some truly excellent verbiage. Offensive perhaps, but very entertaining.