Re: Ptrace hole / Linux 2.2.25

Robert Love
2003-03-23T20:43:34Z

On Sun, 2003-03-23 at 15:30, Martin J. Bligh wrote:

> I don't agree that's always been true by any means. It may currently
> be true, but that's far from a good thing. The current state of divergance
> the distros have from mainline 2.4 is IMHO the biggest problem Linux has
> today.

What part of my statement are you disagreeing with, here?

I agree distribution divergence is a big issue. It may be a mostly
insolvable one, too. It is partially a result of having a long
development cycle. But even if we had a shorter development cycle,
different distributions have different priorities. It is a hard
problem.

> The distros inherently have a conflict of interest getting changes merged
> back into mainline ... it's time consuming to do, it provides them no real
> benefit (they have to maintain their huge trees anyway), and it actively
> damages the "value add" they provide.

I do not disagree.

Although, I think there is incentive to get work merged. It _does_
reduce maintenance. I think you can see Red Hat merging stuff back. I
know my employer encourages everything I do to be done openly and get it
merged. Its a huge benefit to maintenance and QA to get stuff merged.

> If that's people's attitude ("you should use a vendor"), then we need a
> 2.4-fixed tree to be run by somebody with an interest in providing
> critical bugfixes to the community with no distro ties. People may be
> perfectly capable of finding, applying, and collecting their own patches,
> but that's no reason to make it difficult.

No where above did I say "you should use a vendor"

In fact, what I did say is "I think users can and should compile their
own kernel if they want. And as kernel developers, we should facilitate
that."

I merely suggest that users should not expect anything if they go it
there own. They need to follow the lists and be informed. Its like me
assuming I can maintain my car without a mechanic and then freaking out
when I did not hear about a service defect. Actually, a better analogy
may include me knowing nothing about cars, too :)

Marcelo is in a tough spot. I think Arjan's email (just sent) sums it
up well. It is not so clear cut. Personally, I think the ext3 bugs in
2.4.20 are worse than this local ptrace problem (there are other local
issues, too). I also think some people are skeptical over the
correctness of this patch.

Anyhow, what exactly are we arguing over?

Robert Love