Re: [PATCH net-next 0/2] appletalk: move the protocol out of tree

[Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>]

On Tue, 16 Jun 2026 09:13:46 +0200 Carsten Strotmann wrote:
> I'm a user of AppleTalk and other "Retro"-Features in the Linux Kernel.
> 
> On 16 Jun 2026, at 2:55, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> 
> > We can complain about the AI slop til the cows comes home.
> > I don't like it, you don't like it. What difference does it make?
> >
> > If y'all have real solutions please share. Complaining about
> > "commercial interests" and "nuk[ing] everything in a panic reaction"
> > is not helpful.  
> 
> the solution, as Adrian pointed out, is to leave these features in
> the Linux kernel but have them disabled by default.

I think y'all need to internalize that "just leave it in" means work.
_Someone_ has to handle the reports and patches. And since nobody is
doing that the code is going to GitHub, where it can continue to "just
be left" or whatever, without racking up CVEs for the Linux kernel
and leading to maintainer burn out :/

> Maybe put a warning message in the kernel config tools that people
> should only enable these if they know what they are doing.
> 
> These "retro"-features should not pose any security risk of they are
> not compiled into a kernel.

Nobody is stopping you from using this code! It's perfectly suitable 
to be an out of tree module. Maybe it'd be harder if someone wanted to
remove a CPU architecture you want to use, but protocols are perfectly
fine as loadable modules. You can continue to use the code from:
 https://github.com/linux-netdev/mod-orphan

Presumably you could get Debian to package that and you wouldn't even
know the sources no longer live in the kernel tree.