Re: My thoughts on the "new development model"

William Lee Irwin III
2004-10-23T00:01:47Z

On Fri, Oct 22, 2004 at 06:58:24PM -0400, Lee Revell wrote:
> My $0.02:
> Part of the reasoning behind the new development model is that if you
> want a stable kernel, there are many vendors who will give you one. The
> new dev model is partially driven by vendors and developers desire to
> get their features into mainline quicker. There is an inherent
> stability cost associated with this, but the price is only paid by users
> who want stability AND the latest kernel.org kernel. The big players
> all seem to agree that the new development model better suits users and
> their own needs. The distros are in a better position to determine what
> constitutes a stable kernel anyway, they have millions of users to test
> on. Let the vendors AND the kernel hackers do what they are each best
> at.

I don't entirely follow these sorts of discussion, but this vaguely
disagrees with what I've heard in some nitpicky way. I believe it goes
something along the lines of absorbing more distro content on the
grounds that some of the larger variances of distro kernels have been
detrimental in the past or some such.

On Fri, Oct 22, 2004 at 06:58:24PM -0400, Lee Revell wrote:
> We need to continue the rapid pace of development because although Linux
> rules in the small to mid server arena there are other areas where MS
> and Apple are clearly ahead. If you want to make an omelette you have
> to break some eggs...

This is clearly economics and HCI; I'll refrain from comment myself but
hope someone knowledgable there chimes in, as this likely needs
qualification.

-- wli