Re: Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario

Greg KH
2005-12-06T04:08:48Z

On Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 04:23:57PM -0800, Tim Bird wrote:
> Dave Airlie wrote:
> >>To the larger argument about supporting binary drivers,
> >>all Arjan manages to prove with his post is that,
> >>if handled in the worst possible way, support for
> >>binary drivers would be a disaster. Who can disagree
> >>with that?
> >>
> > And do you think that given the opportunity, any company is going
> > spend the extra money required to not do it in the worst possible
> > way??
>
> I meant "handled in the worst possible way by
> the kernel developers". It *is* possible to define
> stable APIs and have them used successfully.
>
> POSIX is not the greatest example, but it seems
> to work OK. I realize that drivers are more
> tightly bound to the kernel than are libraries
> or applications, but sheesh, this is not rocket
> science.

For people to think that the kernel developers are just "too dumb" to
make a stable kernel api (and yes, I've had people accuse me of this
many times to my face[1]) shows a total lack of understanding as to
_why_ we change the in-kernel api all the time. Please see
Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt for details on this.

thanks,

greg k-h

[1] My usual response is, "If we are so dumb, why are you using the kernel
made by us?", which usually stops the conversation right there.