From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from smtp.kernel.org (aws-us-west-2-korg-mail-1.web.codeaurora.org [10.30.226.201]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 1B6B24A19 for ; Sat, 25 Jun 2022 12:04:05 +0000 (UTC) Received: by smtp.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 90383C3411C; Sat, 25 Jun 2022 12:04:03 +0000 (UTC) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/simple; d=kernel.org; s=k20201202; t=1656158645; bh=vB4In3INtqP94PXlc318Cy8TjI4qj3LdHUmD3OuHnOo=; h=Date:From:To:Cc:Subject:In-Reply-To:References:From; b=hjumWdOsKd+Mf+gD4eRsrntNAMVqpzBlB39YFRo4n4uF1IKBAd8Qf0ED5+9TOCVq5 IcfW0CTTdGT2fw50Rnu817EiYcDEHmgxPp7GeZK1PxbtelWt1HgRBedw4QMghDyd9P 4kFIe+S2TOvkkgPQ65gN1e1cXTC+4d67dqiYqWcK4meOhnbAtL+GO17AYH79hpjiqm QQdOKPTgugyJvHL+SsnJdFSZmYcQ5attjXb1GjgeK1Hb2GeCtU4VtGdoG636V0pRDz pRlH9fXNdohhc46tYUbqnpKILPVUJLkvBQEamvDg9z3ZzRIuHbHLmbIRG3R1Ua/KGp wtqXz6XgX6ZtA== Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2022 13:03:59 +0100 From: Mauro Carvalho Chehab To: James Bottomley Cc: Laurent Pinchart , Jens Axboe , Christoph Hellwig , Miguel Ojeda , ksummit@lists.linux.dev, ksummit Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINER SUMMIT] Are we becoming too fearful? [was Re: [TECH TOPIC] Rust] Message-ID: <20220625130353.6fbc56d2@sal.lan> In-Reply-To: References: <2513dc4528c71d34d400c104e91ada6517869886.camel@HansenPartnership.com> X-Mailer: Claws Mail 4.1.0 (GTK 3.24.34; x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu) Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: ksummit@lists.linux.dev List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Em Sun, 19 Jun 2022 10:45:00 -0400 James Bottomley escreveu: > I think there's a growing problem in Linux which is exemplified by this > Rust debate but which goes way beyond it: We're becoming too fearful of > making big decisions to sustain innovation in some areas. I don't think so. Rust is special in the sense that, if it succeeds and the Kernel ends being Rewritten in Rust, it will affect everyone. On a huge community like the Kernel, that means that this topic will surely attract lots of discussions, and that decisions will be tough, as it is hard to reach consensus. Yet, we're experimenting with it, meaning that the community is willing to try innovating, even when this trying something different from everything else already tried in the past. > The biggest area where we currently squelch innovation is around > anything that touches the user space ABI. Allegations of having to get > everything right ab initio because we have to support it "forever" and > all the subsequent wittering and second guessing are really stifling > innovation in pretty much anything that could be exposed to user space. I agree with that. In the past, we have the EXPERIMENTAL kconfig where we did some experiments even with uAPI/uAPI. Nowadays, lots of such experiments are actually happening happen outside upstream, as: 1) it is very hard to have maintainers accept APIs that are used only by a single driver; 2) nobody wants to carry the costs of adding backward-compatible workarounds for APIs that ends requiring changes after new hardware devices would require changes on it. Not sure how to address it without adding an "API staging" support somehow. Regards, Mauro