Re: [Suspend2-devel] Re: uswsusp history lesson

Olivier Galibert
2006-07-08T17:49:30Z

On Sat, Jul 08, 2006 at 06:47:26PM +0200, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-07-08 at 18:43 +0200, Olivier Galibert wrote:
> > On Sat, Jul 08, 2006 at 12:41:58PM +0200, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> > > Very often, choice is good. but for something this fundamental, it is
> > > not. We also don't have 2 scsi layers for example.
> >
> > We have 2 ide layers, 2 usb-storage drivers, 2 sound systems and we
> > have had 2 pcmcia subsystems and 2 usb subsystems.
>
> well not sure about all of them... but it sucks.

- drivers/ide vs. Alan's libata work
- usb-storage vs. ub
- oss vs. alsa

And for the old ones:
- pcmcia-cs vs. Linus' yenta code
- the old usb stuff vs. Linus' rewrite

And I've forgottem v4l1 vs. v4l2 too.

> Just take the alsa/OSS case. It's taken Adrian Bunk a LOT of effort to
> get people to report bugs against alsa; unless you threaten to remove
> the other driver they just won't and switch to the other driver.

You're forgetting some inconvenient facts about alsa though:

- at least for a long while, they didn't care about compatibility
between versions

- the interface is atrocious (shared library several orders of
magnitude more complex than necessary, because KISS is not cool
enough)

- the oss interface compatiblity has always been and still is
considered a second class citizen

If the gpl-ification of the full OSS system had happened much earlier,
ALSA would have been crushed under its own weight by now.

OG.