Re: RFC: Starting a stable kernel series off the 2.6 kernel

Jeff V. Merkey
2005-12-04T01:19:16Z

Matthias Andree wrote:

>On Sat, 03 Dec 2005, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
>
>
>
>>>Exactly that, and kernel interfaces going away just to annoy binary
>>>module providers also hurts third-party OSS modules, such as
>>>Fujitsu-Siemens's ServerView agents.
>>>
>>>
>>in kernel API never was and never will be stable, that's entirely
>>irrelevant and independent of the proposal at hand.
>>
>>
>
>It's still an annoying side effect - is there a list of kernel functions
>removed, with version removed, and with replacement? I know of none, but
>then again I don't hack the kernel very often.
>
>
>
These folks have nothing new to innovate here. The memory manager and VM
gets revamped every other release. Exports get broken, binary only
module compatibility busted every rev of the kernel. I spend weeks on
each kernel fixing the breakage. These people don't get it, don't care,
and to be honest, you are wasting your time here trying to convince
them. It's never stable because they don't want it to be. This is how
they maintain control
of this code. I have apps written for Windows in 1990 and 1998 that
still run on Windows XP today. Linux has no such concept of
backwards compatiblity. Every company who has embraced it outside of
hardware based solutions is dying or has died. IBM is secretly
forking it as we speak and using it to get out of paying for Unix licenses.

As annoying as it is, accept it and live with it. These people have no
sense of loyalty to you or your customers. They don't even care about
each other.
Linux is not a "family" in any sense. I wanted very much to believe this
and I was loyal to these folks for 10 years, invested millions of dollars
in development of my and others money in development to support it,
crippled Novell and pushed them to embrace Linux and my reward was
smearing and expulsion from the community. They have no direction and
the whole thing is stagnant now. All the development is incremental
bug fixes and anti-competitive mods to break each others distros.

You are standing on a battlefield. Quietly fork each release, make your
mods, post patches somewhere for the poor civilians who are
"collateral damage" in the war with constantly busted software, and you
might help some folks.

Jeff