From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263561AbTLJNRZ (ORCPT ); Wed, 10 Dec 2003 08:17:25 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263564AbTLJNRZ (ORCPT ); Wed, 10 Dec 2003 08:17:25 -0500 Received: from mail3.ithnet.com ([217.64.64.7]:15829 "HELO heather-ng.ithnet.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S263561AbTLJNRW (ORCPT ); Wed, 10 Dec 2003 08:17:22 -0500 X-Sender-Authentication: net64 Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 14:17:19 +0100 From: Stephan von Krawczynski To: William Lee Irwin III Cc: paul@clubi.ie, marcelo.tosatti@cyclades.com, thornber@sistina.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: your mail Message-Id: <20031210141719.1c8d5033.skraw@ithnet.com> In-Reply-To: <20031210120336.GU8039@holomorphy.com> References: <20031210120336.GU8039@holomorphy.com> Organization: ith Kommunikationstechnik GmbH X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.9.7 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 04:03:36 -0800 William Lee Irwin III wrote: > On Tue, 9 Dec 2003, William Lee Irwin III wrote: > >>> Just apply the patch if you're for some reason terrified of 2.6. > > On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 00:15:17 +0000 (GMT) Paul Jakma wrote: > >> Or get RedHat or Fedora to apply the patch. > > On Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 11:49:28AM +0000, skraw@ithnet.com wrote: > > There it is again, this /dev/null argument. > > "Multi-billion dollar companies" have gone bancrupt on the simple > > fact that diversification of one product can rattle customers/users > > to a degree that they in fact decide against the whole product range. > > IOW go on with the idea to spread around an unknown number of kernel > > versions and you can be sure that linux as a whole will greatly suffer. > > This is a "user" issue, not a "developer" issue of course. Developers > > can apply any kind of patches they like, but don't go and tell the > > vast user base to "just apply patch xyz". They won't honor this at > > all, your level of acceptance will dramatically drop. > > One of the main reasons to have an open source OS is customization. > Arguing that it's not truly feasible to customize will not hold water. Are you calling a user-configured (not user-patched) kernel "customized" or not? _The_ top reason (at least when reading Al's posts :-) is probably that the source is cross-checked by many eyes. If you create a infinite number of patched kernel-versions it is obvious you will loose this primary advantage. The more versions the fewer cross-checking. IOW a "customized" but instable OS values exactly zero. > Pretty much every "productized" version of Linux is heavily customized > to get some kind of value-add. There's no reason to bother mainline > with this; if it's a serious user issue of that magnitude vendors will > pick it up. "Serious" is a subjective argument, therefore different people see different issues as serious. In my opinion a kernel.org kernel should cover most if not all possible stable customizations, see it as a pool. So my primary question for inclusion would not be "what is it worth?" but "does it do any harm?". I am not god, therefore I do not and can not judge "worthness". Can you? Regards, Stephan