Re: Attempted summary of suspend-blockers LKML thread, take three

Paul E. McKenney
2010-08-13T14:42:36Z

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 01:58:12PM +0300, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 10:48 PM, Brian Swetland <swetland@google.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Felipe Contreras
> > <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Not Ubuntu, not Fedora, not MeeGo, not anyone with a typical
> >> user-space seems to be having this problem. I can argue to you that
> >> this problem can be solved in easier ways, but instead I will argue
> >> that perhaps we should wait for somebody besides Android to complain
> >> about it before providing a "solution". Because after all, what good
> >> is a "solution" provided by the kernel, if the user-space is not going
> >> to use it, ever.
> >
> > I'm curious, when does Android count as a user of the kernel?  I
> > gather that volume of sales or users doesn't count.  Do we have to
> > include some percentage of "desktop" Linux?
>
> You are *one* user of the kernel. Let's suppose Android wasn't using
> suspend-blockers, and there was another equally successful linux
> mobile platform, Foobingo, and they were using them, and they were the
> only ones interested on implementing them.
>
> What does that change? Nothing. They still need to convince the
> community that what they are proposing to be merged is actually
> useful, and somebody will use it. If not, they can just keep the patch
> for themselves until they do. I don't see the big deal.

So the current users of the Linux kernel are the following?

o GNU/Linux
o Android

Do any other distributions or devices with unusual user-space layouts
qualify?

Thanx, Paul

> > If we're an undesirable second-class citizen, why do people care that
> > "android is forking the kernel"?
>
> Nobody has expressed anything remotely like that (that you are a
> second-class citizen). Why makes you think so? Lots of people get
> patches denied. Like Nokia's u_char driver, which is *way* less
> controversial than this one.
>
> --
> Felipe Contreras