Re: [git pull] drm request 3

["\"C. Bergström\"" <cbergstrom@pathscale.com>]

Pekka Enberg wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 8:49 AM, Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:
>   
>> The conclusion is crystal clear, breaking an ABI via a "flag day"
>> cleanup/feature/etc is:
>>
>>  - wrong
>>
>>  - harmful
>>
>>  - limits the developer base
>>
>>  - limits the tester base
>>
>>  - wastes time and effort. (fewer developers/testers means that while _this_
>>   feature was easier to add, all your _future_ features will be a bit harder
>>   to do. It compounds up.)
>>
>>  - so it hurts even the very developer who is most convinced that this was the
>>   right thing to do
>>
>> It's a bad technical decision throughout. It's masochistic and often suicidal
>> to just about any project in essence. I've seen projects that did it once and
>> died just due to that single act of stupidity. I've seen projects that have
>> done it a few times and took the usage hit, limped along with the wounds and
>> never grew to the size they could have achieved. I've seen projects that did
>> it once, took the hit, learned from it and never did it again.
>>     
>
> Agreed. What bothers me in this discussion is that people keep
> bringing up the fact that nouveau is mostly developed by volunteers
> and thus it doesn't make sense to make sure it's backwards (or
> forwards) compatible. But the way I see it, it's the complete
> opposite. It's _more_ important to support ABIs for community-driven
> efforts because you're relying on people who by definition don't have
> time to waste. While the nouveau people might have good intentions,
> I'm afraid they might be severely limiting their developer and tester
> base because they're not focused on real world problems (like the ones
> Linus is seeing).
staging != stable

Nobody guaranteed a stable API for staging and in fact it was stated 
previously it needed to be changed.  Please lets just get back to work 
and stop declaring the sky is falling.