Re: starting with 2.7

[Felipe Alfaro Solana <lkml@mac.com>]

On 4 Jan 2005, at 07:36, Al Viro wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 06:46:49AM +0100, Willy Tarreau wrote:
>> On Mon, Jan 03, 2005 at 10:14:42PM +0000, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
>>>> Gosh! I bought an ATI video card, I bought a VMware license, 
>>>> etc.... I
>>>> want to keep using them. Changing a "stable" kernel will 
>>>> continuously
>>>> annoy users and vendors.
>>>
>>> So buy some Operating System that supports the propritary software of
>>> your choice but stop annoying us.
>>
>> That's what he did. But it was not written in the notice that it 
>> could stop
>> working at any time :-)
>
> Do you want a long list of message-IDs going way, way back?  Ones of 
> Linus'
> postings saying that there never had been any promise whatsoever of 
> in-kernel
> interfaces staying unchanged...

  I don't pretend that kernel interfaces stay written in stone, for 
ages. What I would like is that, at least, those interfaces were stable 
enough, let's say for a few months for a stable kernel series, so I 
don't have to keep bothering my propietary VMWare vendor to fix the 
problems for me, since the new kernel interface broke VMWare. Yeah, I 
know I could decide not to upgrade kernels in last instance, but that's 
not always possible.

If kernel interfaces need to be changed for whatever reason, change 
them in 2.7, -mm, -ac or whatever tree first, and let the community 
know beforehand what those changes will be, and be prepared to adapt. 
Meanwhile, try to leave 2.6 as stable as possible.