Comment 31 for bug 313027

"We can't fix it, it's AMD:s responsibility to fix their driver, and they are aware of it.. The same happened during 8.10 cycle, and they released an unofficial driver just for ubuntu a week before release or so."

I find this attitude counterproductive and naive.

Not being a developer myself, I can't claim to have pushed the Linux movement forward beyond having reported a few dozen bugs on one forum or another, but isn't an issue like this larger than just one development team?

Of course AMD does need to update their drivers as kernels and x-window servers evolve, but don't the kernel and x-window development teams also have a responsibility to work toward more compatible products?

At the very least this issue is divided two ways: between the AMD development team and the X-Org development team. As I see it, the X-Org team is responsible for developing a more flexible, stable, and compatible server while the AMD team is responsible for making a more universal driver.

It's not productive to say we should "just wait" for one team to work it out, especially one with no obligation to comply.
The AMD team has been great about keeping up with evolving distros, but keep in mind those guys are actually paid for the work which they distribute for free, so the decision to update probably comes from higher-ups who may not see the problem as the driver they've been pouring money into, but the X-Org server which has broken compatibility with it.
The X-Org team, as volunteers, have no obligation to consider proprietary software support in their plans, but at least a few developers do make patches to supplement the main tree for these issues. Why? Lots of reasons, but the most important being: it is necessary and it is good for development. By fixing up the server to be compatible with another driver, proprietary or otherwise, the server becomes a better product.

Also, while I do sincerely hope that the open-source ATI driver will one day offer all the features of the hardware it's designed for, it does not and will not for quite a while yet. From the average user point of view, not the open-source freedom fighter, this driver is a severe downgrade and regression from the proprietary; from the Aunt Tillie point of view, "It don't work." and both are reason enough for many people to give up on the distro entirely, stop testing, stop reporting bugs, and switch to some proprietary operating system that gives them what they want even though it costs much more. That's bad for development and that's bad for Linux, not only Ubuntu.

tl;dr: Doing nothing is never the answer. Dev teams should work toward mutual rather than independent growth for the good of Linux.

Also, regarding the bug: Has anyone had experience compiling their own X-Org server and using the proprietary driver? Is it possible for the X-Org server from Intrepid be forward-ported to Jaunty in the interim? It looks like more data on where exactly this breaks down must be found if the X-Org developers are to come up with a patch OR the AMD developers are going to rework their driver.