From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261926AbVACWNu (ORCPT ); Mon, 3 Jan 2005 17:13:50 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261885AbVACWNd (ORCPT ); Mon, 3 Jan 2005 17:13:33 -0500 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([66.187.233.31]:53667 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261944AbVACWLz (ORCPT ); Mon, 3 Jan 2005 17:11:55 -0500 Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2005 17:10:35 -0500 (EST) From: Rik van Riel X-X-Sender: riel@chimarrao.boston.redhat.com To: Felipe Alfaro Solana cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Horst von Brand , Adrian Bunk , William Lee Irwin III , Maciej Soltysiak , Andries Brouwer , William Lee Irwin III Subject: Re: starting with 2.7 In-Reply-To: <5B2E0ED4-5DD3-11D9-892B-000D9352858E@mac.com> Message-ID: References: <200501032059.j03KxOEB004666@laptop11.inf.utfsm.cl> <0F9DCB4E-5DD1-11D9-892B-000D9352858E@mac.com> <5B2E0ED4-5DD3-11D9-892B-000D9352858E@mac.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Mon, 3 Jan 2005, Felipe Alfaro Solana wrote: > On 3 Jan 2005, at 22:48, Rik van Riel wrote: >> On Mon, 3 Jan 2005, Felipe Alfaro Solana wrote: >>> Unfortunately, you can't force the entire hardware industry to open up >>> their drivers. >> >> That's ok. I don't have to buy that hardware. > > Gosh! I bought an ATI video card, I bought a VMware license, etc.... I > want to keep using them. That's your choice, and you (and your vendors) will have to deal with the issues. I don't see why we should hold back the development of Linux for it... > Changing a "stable" kernel will continuously annoy users and vendors. On the other hand, not having a feature users need available in a stable kernel also annoys users and vendors. During the 2.4 days this lead to every distribution needing to do a bunch of backports from the 2.5 kernel, and the availability of 2.4 kernels with every possible subset of 2.5 features - but none with all the features. Arguably, that is a much worse situation for users and vendors than a faster-changing 2.6 tree, where at least everybody is using the same tree. You can't have your cake and eat it, too. -- "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan