Cc: Greg KH <greg@...>, Simon Arlott <simon@...>, Chris Wright <chrisw@...>, <linux-kernel@...>, <linux-security-module@...>, Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@...>, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...>, Andreas Gruenbacher <agruen@...>, Thomas Fricaccia <thomas_fricacci@...>, Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@...>, James Morris <jmorris@...>, Crispin Cowan <crispin@...>, Giacomo Catenazzi <cate@...>, Alan Cox <alan@...>
We're neither talking about distribution nor legal aspects, but
about existence. But anyway, you seem to agree with me that there
are very good reasons for not including these in the kernel.
There is a big difference between "not doing anything to help"
and "actively doing something to make life difficult for". The
former is undoubtedly legitimate. It's the latter we're
discussing here.
Then why is "being unmaintained" being toted as an argument
*against* inclusion in the kernel?
That's certainly better, but not always possible. Do you
agree with me that if it isn't, then that's a very good
reason for not including that code in the kernel?
Correct. Again, you appear to agree with my statement that
for some code there are very good reasons not to include it
in the kernel.
Putting aside the fruitless question of whose fault it is,
is it a "very good reason" for actively making life more
difficult for them than it is already, eg. by gratuitiously
breaking interfaces they rely on for no other "very good
reason" than to discourage out-of-tree development? In other
words, do you think it benefits the Linux community if you
discourage those programmers you've already scared away from
submitting their code to the kernel from continuing their
work off-tree, too? In summary, do you think the world would
be a better place if all the existing out-of-tree modules
just ceased to exist, without any replacement?
T.
-
