linux-kernel - Re: Please release a stable kernel Linux 3.0

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Message-ID: <20070628173051.4a3422c0@the-village.bc.nu>
Date:	Thu, 28 Jun 2007 17:30:51 +0100
From:	Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To:	William D Waddington <william.waddington@...zmo.com>
Cc:	Helge Hafting <helge.hafting@...el.hist.no>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Al Boldi <a1426z@...ab.com>
Subject: Re: Please release a stable kernel Linux 3.0

> Fair enough:
> http://www.tahomatech.com/downloads/drivers/linux_2.6/pci/x86/compressed_tarfiles/
> or for your browsing pleasure:
> http://www.tahomatech.com/downloads/drivers/linux_2.6/pci/x86/files/
> 
> But I really don't see much hope :(  Coding style, masses of ioctls,
> build and install technique,  limited user base, etc, etc, etc...  Most
> of the above to keep API compatibility with other OS/older drivers -
> back to SunOS 4.1.3.  (BTW, it does seem to work...)

Its small, its relatively sanely structured and its not that bad
stylewise. Nothing a few seds, an indent and a polish wouldn't cure. As
to the ioctls - its a specialised driver for specialised purposes so the
ioctls are not IMHO an issue beyond worrying about compat_ and if you
want compat_ interfaces for them or not.

> And I probably have the license wrong.  The code has always been in
> the public domain.  (Advice welcome...)

Public domain is GPL compatible. 

> My (mild) beef is more like what I take to be Al's point: it feels like
> there is a kind of hostility toward out-of-tree maintainers.  Why not

Some of that comes about because a lot of them are out of tree
maintaining non-free stuff, shipping binary products - often entirely
binary without a Linux or GPL label - until the man in black catches them
and sues them in Germany.

> encourage _all_ of us who are beavering away at open-source code?  My
> stuff doesn't belong in mainline, but it _is_ open, and in some minor
> way allows more folks to run Linux.

Quite honestly your stuff is *less* obscure than some of the hardware we
have in-tree drivers for, and rather cleaner.

> A cleaned-up, consistent, and out-of-tree friendly way of handling API
> changes might help us all.

The problem is that its very impractical. If I change a kernel API I fix
up the in tree users and test those I can, that's "accepted practice" -
you make mess doing a job you clean it up. I can't do that for out of
tree code because its out of tree.
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