Free ATI drivers for Christmas? (Linux.com)

Free ATI drivers for Christmas? (Linux.com)

Yes, you're probably right to some extent.

One of the problems Free Software projects have is that there are often a lot more people who'd "like to help out" than actually bring some significant results. That's not because people are deliberately wasting project time, but often this sort of thing seems like a great idea on a rainy Sunday afternoon, and then by Monday evening after a long day's work you don't really have time for it. The result is obviously frustrating for existing part-time developers who may feel that they wasted /their/ weekend helping someone else who'll decide actually they need to weed the garden or take the kids swimming instead.

So developers tend to be reluctant to respond to vague "I'd like to help" posts unless the project has a built-in "Newbie task" as the Nouveau people do (or did when I last looked) in the form of their automated test software which everyone can run and report the results without needing supervision.

If you are a coder and sincerely want to help, I'd suggest you try (without bothering the list about it) to obtain a recent version of the code, build it and test it on your hardware, then report the results to the list, and if possible identify something you can do that would make this better for the next person and do it.

If you're a non-coder, there's some chance the project is in a phase where you can't help without using up precious developer resources, which unfortunately means that the best you can do is state your support and look for another project that's in a more suitable phase.